The Bihar Assembly elections 2020, for which the counting of votes will take place on November 10, will be known for many firsts. It was the first assembly election held amid the pandemic, the first held in the absence of the biggest benefactors of social engineering – Lalu Prasad Yadav, the first where political scions– Lalu’s son Tejashwi Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Chirag Paswan — were in full command of their parties.

The counting of votes for the 253-member Assembly will start at 8am and trends will start coming soon after. Both sides– the Tejashwi Yadav-led Mahagathbandhan and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led NDA – will be hoping to be the first to go past the halfway mark of 122.

While exit polls, which are known to go wrong, have predicted an edge for the Tejashwi Yadav-led Mahagathbandhan, analysts say it is a lose-lose situation for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, any which way. If NDA wins, it will be PM Narendra Modi’s win and if they face a setback it will be Kumar’s defeat, they say. An aggressive ally, BJP and LJP to some extent, was not Nitish’s only problem this election.

The pandemic tested the Chief Minister like never before. The alleged dismal handling of the coronavirus pandemic exposed the failing health care system of the state. The nation-wide lockdown saw migrants, mostly belonging to Bihar, facing unimaginable problems without much help from the state government. While a pandemic might come once in a century, the havoc wreaked by annual floods provided another platform for the Opposition to level attacks against the ruling coalition of the JD(U) and BJP.

The alleged lack of development and shortage of jobs was the other issue that the Opposition held the government accountable for.

Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD latched on to these development and employment issues, cleverly keeping Lalu out of all political discourse, and posters, to avoid any attacks over his conviction and imprisonment in a corruption case. Tejashwi’s 10-lakh jobs promise was an instant hit and a big talking point among voters.

The ruling coalition harped on the alleged crime and lawlessness during the UPA era, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to vote for right else Bihar ‘will go back to the dark ages’, squirming with violence.

In the 2015 election, the JD(U), which was part of the Mahagathbandhan, had won 71 seats, the RJD emerged as the single-largest party with 80 seats, Congress managed to win 27and the BJP won 53 seats. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar later dumped the alliance and jumped over to the NDA camp.

This time, the NDA comprises the JD(U), BJP, HAM, Independents (they currently hold 125 seats between them). the Grand Alliance comprises the RJD, Congress, CPI(M) and Independents (they holds 100 seats in the current House). The LJP has two seats and the AIMIM one.

The Bihar assembly elections 2020 were conducted in three phases, the first of which was held for 71 constituencies on October 28. Ninety-four assembly constituencies went to polls in the second phase on November 3 and polls for the remaining 78 constituencies were held on November 7.

The key contestants in the Assembly election are: Nitish Kumar, Tejashwi Prasad, Tej Pratap Yadav, Chirag Paswan, former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, Shreyasi Singh, RJD’s Vijay Prakash Yadav, RJD’s Ashok Kumar, Chandrika Roy, Nand Kishore Yadav.