Hindustani Awam Morcha Secular chief Jitan Ram Manjhi was supposed to be the “game changer” for the BJP when he was asked by Nitish Kumar to step down from the post of chief minister earlier this year.

He was the face of the Mahadalit vote bank created by chief minister Nitish Kumar. The BJP projected Manjhi as the “insulted Mahadalit”. He was supposed to get the saffron party 10 per cent of the votes. 

Along with Ram Vilas Paswan, who is perceived to control 6 per cent of the Paswan votes (the Dalits constitute 16 per cent of the voters in Bihar), the two were supposed to get majority of the Dalit votes. Initially, both Manjhi and Paswan had a war of words over who is the “bigger Dalit leader”.

Results showed that the two proved to be paper tigers. 

Out of the 21 seats contested by Manjhi’s HAMS, the party managed to win only one. Manjhi won in Imamganj in Gaya but lost the seat (Makhdumpur in Gaya) he represented in the previous Assembly elections. 

His son lost too. 

Ministers such as Mahachandar Singh and Brishen Patel, who stuck to him during the political turbulence, lost as well. 
Even Manjhi’s own victory in Imamganj is being credited to the anti-incumbency faced by the sitting MLA and Assembly Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary than to the support enjoyed by Manjhi. 

The NDA fared miserably in the Magadh range where Manjhi was perceived to be strong. The bubble appears to have burst and is likely to bring curtains down on the political dreams of Manjhi to become the face of Dalit politics in Bihar. 
Likewise, out of the 42 seats contested by the LJP, the party could manage to win only two. 

LJP chief and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s brother Pashupati Kumar Paras failed to win back his traditional seat Alauli in Khagaria. His nephew Prince Kumar lost from Kalyanpur in Samastipur and his son-in-law Anil Sadhu did not even come second from Bochaha in Muzaffarpur.

The image of Chirag Paswan as a star campaigner and the inheritor of Ram Vilas Paswan’s political legacy is now being doubted. But in politics, fortunes may turn overnight.

If Paswan and Manjhi failed to deliver, so did RLSP chief and Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, who was flaunted as the Kushwaha face of the NDA. 

Kushwahas are the second largest block in the OBCs, who constitute around 6 per cent of the voters. 

In places such as Samastipur, where Kushwahas have a dominant presence, the NDA did not manage to win a single seat. 

The party, which contested 21 seats, managed to win only two. The claim of Upendra Kushwaha’s influence over his caste is in serious doubt. The three together were supposed to deliver 13 to 14 per cent of the votes. It was a chunk the BJP wanted desperately to add up to the upper castes and EBCs to score a victory this election. 

It did not go that way. Together, the allies contested 86 seats. They have won only five seats. The votes obtained by them roughly work to a little over 9 per cent. 

The BJP is bound to question its own wisdom to allot so many seats to the trio. 

“Contesting just 157 seats, our vote per cent was around 25 per cent. If one adds up, it does not come near the 44 per cent we had hoped to get to win the polls. It is lesser than the 39 per cent votes we got in the Lok Sabha polls,” said a BJP leader.