The first phase of Bihar assembly elections 2020 has begun and the voters have cast their votes on October 28. As per the Election Commission, a 55.69% voter’s turnout had been recorded in the first phase, in at least 71 constituencies of Bihar. The poll booths had been sanitized properly and votes were cast following all the necessary Covid-19 guidelines. The voter’s turnout has been higher this year, as compared to the 2015 assembly elections and the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, where the voter’s turnout was about 53-54%. The turnout was higher in urban areas as compared to the rural areas.

In Patna, the contestants have been targeting the villagers belonging to specific castes and lure them for their benefit. The 3 major contestants, Atul Kumar from BJP, MLA Siddharth from Congress, and Anil Sharma, another BJP leader, all belong to the ‘Bhumihar’ community. While another strong community is of ‘Musahars’, which has been targeted by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) by supporting the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) started by their leader, Jitan Ram Manjhi, before the elections.

The two polling booths in Patna had recorded a total of 70% and 45% votes, among which half of the people had claimed to vote for the Congress contestant, Siddharth, and the other half was in favor of BJP leader, Sharma. As per the locals, few people had voted for Sharma as he is a ‘weak candidate’, while most of them had voted for Congress and is likely to win the elections. What was common among all the voters was that almost all are against the present government (Janata Dal (United)) led by Nitish Kumar, as hardly anyone was in their favour.

Another viewpoint as expressed by the ML-Liberation party in Paliganj constituency was that most voters supported the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate, Sandeep Saurav, who was mostly supported by the Muslim and Yadav community.

The high proportion of voters’ turnout in the first phase might not be a good sign for Nitish Kumar and his party, since BJP and RJD had a significant number of devoted voters and might not be affected by this turnout. Also, in view of the continuous criticism he has been facing over the past few years, especially during the elections, his ‘silent voters’ might have bailed out and failed to vote in his favor. It is because all the major and dominating upper and lower classes of people had been taken by the BJP, Congress, and RJD, JD(U) had cleverly targeted the non-assertive and recessive communities such as ‘Mahadalits’, ‘Pasmanda Muslims’, and other extremely backward classes including most of the women to be its ‘silent voters’. However, these classes have ditched Kumar earlier as well and this time it may result in his fall.

Even though the final output is yet to be disclosed, as per the recent observations in most of the constituencies, Lok Janshkati Party (LJP) is seen to be overriding the JD(U) seats since it gave the tickets to contestants with a BJP background. JD(U) is facing trouble as 24 out of the 35 seats it had contested are against RJD.

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness.