India

[ibfc]

The final results in Bihar ended like this out of 243

NDA 125
BJP 74
JD (U) 43
HAM (S) 4
VIP 4

UPA 110
RJD 75
INC 19
CPI (ML) 12
CPI (M) 2
CPI 2

AIMIM 5
BSP 1
LJP 1
Ind 1

It was a very interesting election with the UPA dominating Phase 1 in South Bihar where the Marxist Leninists also hold sway and getting routed in Phase 3 in North Bihar. Phase 2 comprising a mix of areas was narrowly carried by the NDA leading to the win. Multiple theories abound for why the election changed in the last two phases starting with greater women turnout to save nitish Kumar and save the state from the goons of the RJD once it became clear that the RJD may actually win. The other theory is that the BJP realised that it's ploy of cutting the JDU by propping up the LJP had gone too far and it behaved in the last two phases. The other factor is that the NDA base held up more in north bihar where there is greater communal polarisation due to higher Muslim population as opposed to overwhelmingly Hindu and caste ridden South Bihar. The Prime Minister also issued an emotional open letter to Biharis before the third phase asking them to reject caste and vote for the NDA.

The election ended up being a huge humiliation for Nitish Kumar and he has not yet acknowledged the results. His only tweet today was to mark the birth anniversary of Maulana Azad, the first education minister of the country. Opposition parties have asked him to switch sides and support an RJD government to take revenge for the humiliation. As a 70+ leader who's basically done and has no political heirs, he may just take it up especially considering his long history of bad blood with Modi. It can't be easy for him to accept the current scenario.

[ibfc]

Nov 11, 2020 13:58:21 GMT ibfc said:

The final results in Bihar ended like this out of 243

NDA 125
BJP 74
JD (U) 43
HAM (S) 4
VIP 4

UPA 110
RJD 75
INC 19
CPI (ML) 12
CPI (M) 2
CPI 2

AIMIM 5
BSP 1
LJP 1
Ind 1

It was a very interesting election with the UPA dominating Phase 1 in South Bihar where the Marxist Leninists also hold sway and getting routed in Phase 3 in North Bihar. Phase 2 comprising a mix of areas was narrowly carried by the NDA leading to the win. Multiple theories abound for why the election changed in the last two phases starting with greater women turnout to save nitish Kumar and save the state from the goons of the RJD once it became clear that the RJD may actually win. The other theory is that the BJP realised that it's ploy of cutting the JDU by propping up the LJP had gone too far and it behaved in the last two phases. The other factor is that the NDA base held up more in north bihar where there is greater communal polarisation due to higher Muslim population as opposed to overwhelmingly Hindu and caste ridden South Bihar. The Prime Minister also issued an emotional open letter to Biharis before the third phase asking them to reject caste and vote for the NDA.

The election ended up being a huge humiliation for Nitish Kumar and he has not yet acknowledged the results. His only tweet today was to mark the birth anniversary of Maulana Azad, the first education minister of the country. Opposition parties have asked him to switch sides and support an RJD government to take revenge for the humiliation. As a 70+ leader who's basically done and has no political heirs, he may just take it up especially considering his long history of bad blood with Modi. It can't be easy for him to accept the current scenario.

Ok Nitish just tweeted thanking the voters and saying he's going to meet Modi to thank him. No mention of CMship and this may yet turn more interesting.

[Georg Ebner]

Alliances:

Parties:

Parties (retains+gains):

[Georg Ebner]

Maps of older elections:

2010&2015:

2015 parties:

2015 alliances:

[Georg Ebner]

JD(U), SeatChanges 2015-2020:

[Georg Ebner]

Muslims over 30%:

Yadavs over 20%:

[Georg Ebner]

Scheduled castes:

Scheduled tribes:

Normal:

[Georg Ebner]

Rural:

Urban:

[ibfc]

Nov 12, 2020 18:26:53 GMT Georg Ebner said:

JD(U), SeatChanges 2015-2020:

To contextualise, BJP and JDU were in alliance in 2010 while LJP was with the RJD and the Congress fought separately.
In 2015, BJP allied with LJP, HAM and RLSP ( the latter two split from the JDU in 2015 and 2013) while the RJD, JDU and Congress fought together. The JDU switched alliances in 2017.

[Georg Ebner]

Fascinatingly the SeatShare of the present NDA-camp has remained the same: 125 in 2015 (71 JD(U) + 53 BJP + 1 HAM) and in 2020 (74 BJP + 43 JD(U) + 4 HAM + 4 VIP).

Present alliances 2015:

Present alliances 2020:

Present alliances 2015 vs. 2020:

[ibfc]

Elections are taking place to the 150 member Municipal Corporation of Greater Hyderabad on 4 December. GHMC has a population of around 7 million and is unique in view of the outsized impact it has on the politics of its state of Telangana. 20% of the assembly constituencies in Telangana fall under GHMC and it generates almost 80% of the revenue of the state. The current composition of the GHMC is:

Telangana Rashtra Samiti (the party ruling the state) -99
AIMIM (a Muslim party that controls the old city of Hyderabad)-44
BJP- 4
INC- 2
Telugu Desam Party-1

This election has become important due to the win of the BJP in the Dubbaka by poll last month by which the BJP has become the main opposition in the state. BJP has really upped the ante in campaigning with many national leaders including Amit Shah campaigning. TRS and MIM are in a sort of informal alliance where the MIM is contesting only 50 odd Muslim dominated seats in the old city and supporting the TRS in the remaining divisions.

The BJP is targeting upwards of 50 seats to ensure that the TRS and MIM would need an alliance to take control of the Corporation. This would allow the BJP to make a credible play for power in the 2023 state elections and will help the BJP gain further defectors from the Congress before 2023.

Results are on 4th and exit polls should be available on 1st.

[Sibboleth]

The AIMIM - which is descended from the pro-Nizam and anti-'India' party of the old Hyderabad State - has been expanding beyond Hyderabad with really quite remarkable success: they won a cluster of heavily Muslim constituencies in Bihar earlier this month, for instance. The 'All India' in their name used to be a bit of a joke, but clearly not so much now.

[Georg Ebner]

Nov 29, 2020 18:29:13 GMT Sibboleth said:

The AIMIM - which is descended from the pro-Nizam and anti-'India' party of the old Hyderabad State - has been expanding beyond Hyderabad with really quite remarkable success: they won a cluster of heavily Muslim constituencies in Bihar earlier this month, for instance. The 'All India' in their name used to be a bit of a joke, but clearly not so much now.

Perhaps they intend to envoke with "All India" the vision of an united SubContinent including Islamic Pakistan & Bangladesh?

[minionofmidas]

Nov 29, 2020 19:59:32 GMT Georg Ebner said:

Nov 29, 2020 18:29:13 GMT Sibboleth said:

The AIMIM - which is descended from the pro-Nizam and anti-'India' party of the old Hyderabad State - has been expanding beyond Hyderabad with really quite remarkable success: they won a cluster of heavily Muslim constituencies in Bihar earlier this month, for instance. The 'All India' in their name used to be a bit of a joke, but clearly not so much now.

Perhaps they intend to envoke with "All India" the vision of an united SubContinent including Islamic Pakistan & Bangladesh?

it's just a very common prefix that usually gets omitted - All India Trinamool Congress, All India Forward Bloc - though not always, eg (not a party) AITUC. Now the grandfathered name of Kerala's Muslim votebank party, the Indian Union Muslim League. That refers to undivided India.

[ibfc]

Nov 29, 2020 23:05:11 GMT minionofmidas said:

Nov 29, 2020 19:59:32 GMT Georg Ebner said:

Perhaps they intend to envoke with "All India" the vision of an united SubContinent including Islamic Pakistan & Bangladesh?

it's just a very common prefix that usually gets omitted - All India Trinamool Congress, All India Forward Bloc - though not always, eg (not a party) AITUC. Now the grandfathered name of Kerala's Muslim votebank party, the Indian Union Muslim League. That refers to undivided India.

I don’t think that’s the case. The Indian Union in the IUML is meant to clearly refer to the current Union of India and differentiate it from the pre partition All India Muslim League which was dissolved some time after partition.

[ibfc]

Nov 29, 2020 18:29:13 GMT Sibboleth said:

The AIMIM - which is descended from the pro-Nizam and anti-'India' party of the old Hyderabad State - has been expanding beyond Hyderabad with really quite remarkable success: they won a cluster of heavily Muslim constituencies in Bihar earlier this month, for instance. The 'All India' in their name used to be a bit of a joke, but clearly not so much now.

AIMIM has managed to make inroads in isolated Majority pockets in states that are otherwise overwhelmingly Hindu. This is the next step in a trend where first Muslims in states with Muslim presence substantial enough to support a Muslim party started doing so (first in Kerala right from the 50s and then followed by Assam in the early 2000s with the AlUDF). AIMIM’s strategy has worked to some extent in Maharashtra as well as Bihar. The interesting thing is that the AIMIM came a cropper in the remaining seats it contested in Bihar where it was clear any vote for the MIM would allow the NDA to sneak through. That makes further expansion in UP difficult because while UP proportionally has more Muslims than Bihar, it doesn’t have any cluster of seats where Muslims are comfortably above 60% of the population.

The other big Muslim populated state is West Bengal where the MIM may face challenges due to being seen as a party of Urdu speaking Muslims. Bengal Muslims (like Keralite Muslims) speak the local language and do not speak Urdu and there are fissures between the two (as seen in the independence of Bangladesh I guess).

The real dampener for the MIM is going to come with the next delimitation in 2026. The MIM President, Owaisi has a lock on the Hyderabad Parliamentary Seat because it was deliberately kept undersized to be Muslim majority. The Hyderabad seat has an electorate of around a million while the exurban Malkajgiri seat surrounding it has an electorate of 3-4 million. Any expansion would ensure Owaisi’s defeat and it is unlikely that he will be protected. He may have to decamp to the Bihari cluster mentioned here (Kishanganj parliamentary constituency) as that is the only Parliamentary seat in India where Urdu speaking Muslims constitute a comfortable majority (around 70%).

[ibfc]

Nov 29, 2020 19:59:32 GMT Georg Ebner said:

Nov 29, 2020 18:29:13 GMT Sibboleth said:

The AIMIM - which is descended from the pro-Nizam and anti-'India' party of the old Hyderabad State - has been expanding beyond Hyderabad with really quite remarkable success: they won a cluster of heavily Muslim constituencies in Bihar earlier this month, for instance. The 'All India' in their name used to be a bit of a joke, but clearly not so much now.

Perhaps they intend to envoke with "All India" the vision of an united SubContinent including Islamic Pakistan & Bangladesh?

All India is used by political organisations that clearly don’t have an All India presence to signal that their intention is to be a national organisation. AIFB was formed by Subhas Bose when he left the INC and the majority of his support came from Bengal. The West Bengal Trinamool Congress changed its name to the All India Trinamool Congress when it merged with Purno Sangma’s faction of the NCP in the early 2000s with an intention to expand in the North Eastern states. The most fascinating example of this signalling by name is of the AIADMK. M G Ramachandran prefixed his party with the All India moniker to show that the party had a more nationalistic outlook and did not share the soft secessionist tendencies of the DMK while sharing its commitment to the Dravidian people. The AIADMK also unlike the DMK regularly contested elections in Tamil dominated pockets in other states. The AIADMK also of course had only non Tamils as its supreme (and in this case, the supreme is literal) for the first 40 odd years of its existence.

[minionofmidas]

Nov 30, 2020 2:36:17 GMT ibfc said:

Nov 29, 2020 23:05:11 GMT minionofmidas said:

it's just a very common prefix that usually gets omitted - All India Trinamool Congress, All India Forward Bloc - though not always, eg (not a party) AITUC. Now the grandfathered name of Kerala's Muslim votebank party, the Indian Union Muslim League. That refers to undivided India.

I don’t think that’s the case. The Indian Union in the IUML is meant to clearly refer to the current Union of India and differentiate it from the pre partition All India Muslim League which was dissolved some time after partition.

you're right - Indian Union as a legal name for India is 1947-50 (until the Constitution), which is also when the name was adopted.

Another very All India party I just remembered (though I never knew its full history before).

[ibfc]

Nov 30, 2020 4:59:18 GMT minionofmidas said:

Nov 30, 2020 2:36:17 GMT ibfc said:

I don’t think that’s the case. The Indian Union in the IUML is meant to clearly refer to the current Union of India and differentiate it from the pre partition All India Muslim League which was dissolved some time after partition.

you're right - Indian Union as a legal name for India is 1947-50 (until the Constitution), which is also when the name was adopted.

Another very All India party I just remembered (though I never knew its full history before).

You may want to check out the All India NR Congress.

[minionofmidas]

Nov 30, 2020 11:19:55 GMT ibfc said:

Nov 30, 2020 4:59:18 GMT minionofmidas said:

you're right - Indian Union as a legal name for India is 1947-50 (until the Constitution), which is also when the name was adopted.

Another very All India party I just remembered (though I never knew its full history before).

You may want to check out the All India NR Congress.

All of French India, I don't see the problem.