BIHAR POLLs 2015

In a stunning show, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) -led grand alliance on Sunday got a thumping majority in the Bihar assembly elections.
The Grand Alliance was heading towards a two-third majority to give Nitish Kumar his third straight victory in Bihar. It is the BJP’s second straight defeat in state elections since the Aam Aadmi Party routed it in Delhi in February.

PM Narendra Modi telephoned JD-U leader Nitish Kumar and congratulated him, as the Grand Alliance which includes Lalu Prasad’s RJD and the Congress was ahead in 172 of the 243 seats. The BJP-led four-party combine led in just 64 seats. Smaller parties including the BSP and the CPI-ML were set to win 7 seats.
By early afternoon, the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress had grabbed over 41 percent of all the votes in the five-phased elections that began on October 12 and ended on November 5. The BJP alliance had got 38 percent.
The Shiv Sena, the BJP’s junior ally in Maharashtra, joined chief ministers Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi, Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah in hailing the Grand Alliance win.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was confident of ousting Nitish Kumar, admitted its calculations had gone wrong in one of the toughest state elections in recent times. “This is not an outcome we expected,” BJP general secretary Ram Madhav said. “The Grand Alliance has done much better than what we thought. This defeat calls for serious thinking. We need time to analyse.”
Union minister Prakash Javadekar sought to blame the BJP’s allies. “The BJP lost only because of alliance arithmetic,” he said. “We failed to understand people’s mind. We will have to change our election strategy,” BJP vice president Prabhat Jha added.