The Bharatiya Janata Party got a shot in the arm on Monday with two sitting Independent members of the Lok Sabha from Bihar -- Putul Kumari and Om Prakash Yadav -- joining the party ahead of the general elections.
Nirmala Bhuria lost to former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria, who wrested the tribal-dominated seat from the BJP by a convincing margin of 88,832 votes.
As many as 28 out of 41 sitting women MPs, including Sonia Gandhi, Hema Malini and Kirron Kher, retained their seats in Lok Sabha.
BJP backed to the hilt Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as its leader in the state and rebuffed a rebellious Chirag Paswan, while acknowledging his Lok Janshakti Party as an ally 'at the Centre'. At a press conference which was attended by top leaders of the JD-U headed by Kumar and the BJP, it was made clear that 'only those who accept the chief ministers leadership will be deemed to be a part of the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar'.
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The BJP suddenly seems vulnerable. This is not entirely surprising. In the past too, governments and leaders who won a thumping Lok Sabha majority lost popularity in a matter of months... The by-polls results shows that a degree of disenchantment with the Modi government is setting in,' says Praful Bidwai.
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