My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

BJP’s calculations in Bihar go awry By  Deepak Parvatiyar February 23, 2015 It is a calculation that seems to have gone awry for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar ostensibly on two counts: If it had hoped to marginalize Nitish Kumar by engineering a vertical split in the ruling Janata Dal (United) in the state, its hopes are dashed If it had hoped to corner the Mahadalit votes by backing the rebel  (now deposed) chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi , even the latter, despite being expelled from the JD(U) along with seven ministers of his government, remains non-committal over his support to the Lotus and even spilled beans over his “ghar wapasi” (returning to the JD-U fold). More than Nitish, it is Manjhi who seems to have upset the BJP’s game plan with his deft political moves. That the latter chose to avoid the trust vote and instead resigned with dignity, it did dash the BJP’s hopes of gaining political mileage by: {"uid":1,"hostPeerN