Bihar has managed to buck two political trends of the past decade. The first is of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) having a chief minister (CM) in every state of the Hindi-speaking belt — Bihar stands out as the lone exception. The BJP may be the primary pole of national politics at present, but Bihar remains the one Hindi heartland state it has never won on its own. The second is that while most states in the region have delivered verdicts in which one party is always very close to the majority mark, government formation in Bihar has required the support of multiple parties. In fact, the last time any party netted a three-digit total in the 243-member assembly was in 2010, when the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) won 115 seats, although it needed its alliance partner, the BJP, to form the government.

In Bihar, the BJP is a rising party (with 42.6% votes in the 110 seats it contested in 2020), yet it is also the state where the party is most constrained. It has organisational muscle, popular national leadership, a committed social base, and deep pockets, but it cannot fathom, just yet, charting an independent political journey in the state. Even when it won more seats than the JD(U) in 2020, it had to back Nitish Kumar for the CM’s office.

Will it change this time around? The seat sharing arrangements of the two rival camps — the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of the BJP, JD (U), and other allies, and the........

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