Exit polls have got it right, not that they could easily have gone wrong, given that all sixteen polls unanimously predicted the NDA romping home victorious. While the reasons for the Mahagathbandhan debacle will be discussed till the cows come home, alarm bells should be ringing in the Congress headquarters over the effete leadership it has, both at the Centre as well as in the states.

At the time of writing this column, CNN-News18 showed 204 for the NDA, with the BJP leading in 92 and the JD(U) in 82 seats, with Chirag Paswan’s LJP securing 21 out of the 29 seats it contested, thus maintaining its impressive strike rate.

Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD has had to bite the dust with 25 seats, a precipitous fall from the 74 it won in the 2020 Assembly elections, and its ally, the Congress, winning merely 5 seats out of the 61 it contested. This time round, Tejashwi cannot accuse the Grand Old Party of letting the alliance down, as the RJD itself has fared no better. He is reaping a bitter harvest of his father Lalu Yadav’s foibles.

The taint of ‘jungle raj’ as well as the fodder scam, in which Lalu has been convicted in five........

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