Sudhanshu Shekhar of the RLSP bagged the seat by a margin of 18600 votes, five times more than the vote polled by late Basant Kumar, his father in 2015 assembly elections. Basant died a day before, he was to take oath as the member of the house. The victory margin of the RLSP candidate is almost five times more than that of his father, who had defeated the same Congress candidate in October-November poll by about 3,600 votes. While RLSP nominee polled 62,434 votes, the Congress candidate bagged 43,784 votes and CPI nominee Ram Naresh Pandey secured 19,835 votes.

No doubt there has been a popular sympathy vote for the RLSP candidate Sudhansu, down the line. The mandate also reflected the disenchantment of the voters towards the performance of the Nitish government. The result also manifests that the people of Harlakhi refused to repose their trust in Nitish. Though three month time is a too short honeymoon period to judge and evaluate the performance of any government, the rise in the crime has to a major extent turned the people hostile towards the Nitish government.

One aspect is also quite noticeable; the Congress candidate faced a defeat notwithstanding the constituency having sizeable Muslim-Yadav vote. It obviously implied that the M-Y did not vote for the grand alliance. This has happened despite the RJD chief Lalu Yadav campaigning for the Congress nominee. Lalu had campaigned aggressively with Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad and other state Congress leaders.

After the election results a section of the Congress leaders are also raising the issue of Nitish Kumar not campaigning in favour of Congress candidate Mohammad Shabir. Senior leaders also nurse the feeling that Shabir became the victim of the ego politics. It is murmured that Nitish consciously avoided campaigning in Harlakhi. Nitish visiting the constituency would certainly have changed the caste equation much to the advantage of Shabir who incidentally has got nearly seven thousand votes more than what he had bagged in 2015. In this backdrop Lalu Yadav would have been credited with ensuring the victory of the Congress.

Since winning this seat had no material importance at all Nitish preferred not to go. In local politics the Kushwahas, the support base of RLSP, are sworn enemies of the M-Y. In fact by not campaigning Nitish sent a message to the Kushwahas who were once his support base. This result has helped them come closer to Nitish at personal level. The Harlakhi verdict could well witness the initiation of a new politics in Bihar. Ever since the grand alliance came to power a cold war has been going on inside the alliance on the role of Lalu and Nitish. While Lalu aspires to lead the secular alternative at the national level, Nitish has also started roping in other parties and forces for floating the GA. The move of the merger of Ajit Singh’s party into the JD(U) is the first major move in this direction.

Of late an impression was gradually gaining ground that Lalu has been calling shots and trying to dictate the bureaucracy and government much to the chagrin of Nitish. He had to often explain that there was nothing so big and being the senior GA leader, he has the right to talk to the bureaucrats.

Nevertheless the Congress should take the verdict seriously. It can ignore it only at its peril. The Congress is on the mission to retrieve its ground in the 2016 elections to West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry state assembly elections. No doubt BJP is weak in these five states but if the Bihar result is any indicator the political configuration in these states will not make the task easier for the Congress. To take advantage of the situation, Congress may enter into alliance with one or other party in these states, but what the party lacks most is its own independent image and credibility.

One thing is sure that Rahul Gandhi’s actions have failed to attract the attention and imagination of the common people, the voters. An alliance with the CPI(M) in West Bengal and with DMK in Tamil Nadu may look like a viable proposition. But how far these will help revive the party is uncertain. In the assembly elections the Congress has more at stake than the BJP, as it will be defending its governments in Assam and Kerala.

The BJP winning 7 seats out of the 12 by elections has galvanised the organization after the rout in the Bihar elections. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has already launched his campaign for the party's fourth straight assembly election victory in Assam by saying that the state will recreate Bihar outcome in the state. A by election result does not reflect the popular mood of the state and is also not supposed to be a referendum on the functioning of the state government, yet the Bihar election is quite important for the simple reason that the Congress has to demystify the reason for its defeat. (IPA Service)