Patna, Oct. 19: Former chief ministers Nitish Kumar and Rabri Devi — campaigning for the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the Congress, respectively, in Haryana — failed to make a mark with the BJP getting majority in the northern state.

Rabri, the wife of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, campaigned rigorously for her sambandhi (close relative) Captain (retired) Vijay Singh Yadav, the Congress candidate in Revari. She addressed the migrant labourers from Bihar in Bhojpuri and urged them to vote for Yadav, the father-in law of her sixth daughter Anushka. But Yadav — a former minister and seven-time MLA — lost.

Anushka, who married Yadav’s son Chiranjeev Rao in 2012, also campaigned for her father-in-law. Even her brother Tejaswi addressed a rally with Congress leader Kumari Selja in support of Yadav. But nothing worked.

“Elections are all about waves. There was a pro-BJP wave and even migrant labourers from Bihar went along with it,” said a dejected RJD MLA.

Nitish’s venture in Haryana polls was equally disastrous. He, along with JDU national president Sharad Yadav, addressed a series of public meetings in favour of INLD candidates for two days. But only a handful of INLD candidates they campaigned for won.

“Most of the candidates Nitish campaigned for lost,” said a BJP leader. The two JDU candidates who contested from Badshahpur and Mahendragarh Assembly seats in Haryana bagged 114 and 38 votes.

Former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi was delighted after the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly poll results trickled in and tweeted: “Nitish Kumar went to Haryana to campaign for Chautala, lodged in Tihar Jail in a corruption case, but failed and BJP got majority. BJP increasing its strength from 4 to more than 50 in Haryana and in Maharashtra from 46 to triple the number.”

(Modi tweeted before the counting was over)

On the eve of the results, there were reports that Lalu and Nitish were negotiating an alliance between the Congress and INLD in Haryana. But with the BJP getting a clear majority, it proved a futile exercise.

Unlike Rabri and Nitish, BJP leaders Sushil Kumar Modi, Nand Kishore Yadav and Mangal Pandey had a better experience in Maharashtra. They were asked to campaign in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur because of the large migrant Bihari workforce there. The BJP performed well in those three areas.

Political observers in Patna pointed out that Bihari leaders could seldom make an impact on the outcome of Assembly polls in other states. “When Samajwadi Party’s Mulyam Singh Yadav and RJD’s Lalu were rivals in 1990s, the RJD chief fielded over 24 candidates in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and campaigned for them.

He drew huge crowd in every public meeting but the party bagged less than 1,000 votes in several seats.

Similar was the experience of Nitish when the JDU fielded over 12 candidates in the Delhi Assembly polls last year. The sole JDU candidate to win was Shoaib Iqbal, who was already an MLA on a different party tag. The vote count of other JDU candidates was humiliating despite Nitish campaigning extensively,” said a former JDU MP, stressing that these leaders did not have “national status”.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Nand Kishore Yadav, disagreed. Yadav, who extensively campaigned in Mumbai, claimed that the BJP had won most of the Assembly seats in the business capital of India.

“The Biharis in Mumbai were against a split verdict in Maharashtra. They wanted security. They felt that national parties were better placed to provide them respect and security. We were able to convince the migrant Biharis that it was the BJP and not the Congress which could provide them security and respect in Maharashtra,” Yadav told The Telegraph.

While the BJP leaders celebrated the twin victories bursting crackers in their state office, the JDU and the RJD had an identical explanation for the victory of the BJP.

“The alignment of secular forces could not take place. The secular votes got split,” said the state JDU chief, Vashishstha Narayan Singh. The only silver lining for the RJD and the JDU was that the BJP could not get a majority on its own in Maharashtra. Both the parties claimed that the BJP would not get majority in Bihar as well.