India’s poorest state, Bihar, yesterday began voting in a high-stakes election that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will help his government push through a faltering reform drive.
The Indian leader, who has promised billions of US dollars for development in Bihar, urged people to come out and vote “in large numbers” as polls opened in the first phase of the election.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide victory in general elections last year, but the reforms it promised have been blocked in the upper house of parliament, where it lacks a majority.
Photo: Reuters
Modi’s National Democratic Alliance is hoping to wrest control of Bihar with a promise of economic development in a state where two-thirds of people lack access to electricity.
“What is most important for us is jobs,” college student Sangeeta told reporters outside a polling booth in Bihar early yesterday. “If there are jobs, the youth won’t have to leave the state and go elsewhere for employment.”
The prime minister has personally addressed 10 major campaign rallies, going all out to secure victory in the populous eastern state that would give his government some of the extra seats it needs to break the current logjam.
“I want jobs for the young people of Bihar,” he told a campaign rally yesterday. “Bihar must become the strength of our nation.”
The BJP needs a victory after suffering a humiliating defeat in February elections for the New Delhi state assembly to a fledgling anti-corruption party.
However, analysts and opinion polls indicate the Bihar election is too close to call.
Modi is up against an unlikely alliance of two powerful local leaders, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his predecessor, Lalu Prasad Yadav, who served time in prison for corruption.
Their rivalry goes back decades, but both men — who command widespread support among the lower classes — have put their differences aside to thwart Modi.
Kumar, a long-time critic of Modi, is credited with starting development and quashing corruption and is seeking a third term.
Kumar’s tenure contrasts sharply with that of Yadav’s, a sharp-witted former railway minister who presided over years of stagnant growth and spent time in prison for embezzlement.
Bihar has long been notorious for corruption, and as the first phase of voting got under way yesterday, Kumar’s party was forced to drop a top-ranking minister after he was caught on camera apparently accepting bundles of cash from a businessman.
The campaign has also been dogged by religious tensions after a Muslim man was lynched by a Hindu mob in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh last month over unsubstantiated claims that he was eating beef.
Hindus consider cows to be sacred.
After 10 days of silence on the killing, Modi on Thursday last week used an election rally in Bihar — which is majority-Hindu, but has sizeable Muslim, Christian and Sikh minorities — to appeal for unity.
Voting is to be held in five phases, with results due on Nov. 8. Nearly 10 million voters are eligible to vote in the first phase and there are 583 candidates.
Bihar, India’s third-most populous state, has never been ruled by the BJP on its own, with elections traditionally won by regional parties and alliances.
Many of its 104 million people still vote along caste lines.
Some observers say that Modi has put off pushing through contentious reforms, including a land acquisition bill, ahead of the polls for fear of losing votes.
While growth is now purring along at about 7 percent, complaints have been mounting about his failure to nail down major reforms.
The BJP has a majority in the lower house of parliament, but only about a quarter of the 245 members in the upper house, where seats are distributed based on the strength of political parties in state assemblies.
That has allowed the opposition parties to block the government’s land, taxation and other legislative reforms needed to overhaul the economy.
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