Bihar Elections | Who Will Win The Four-Cornered Seemanchal Contest?

Seemanchal—with its 24 seats and around 10 per cent of the 243-member Bihar assembly—is in the spotlight this election. The reason being that the northeastern region of Bihar, comprising four districts—Purnea, Araria, Katihar and Kishanganj—has a history of giving a fractured mandate and swinging one way or another since 2005. In this election, the region bordering Nepal and Bangladesh through West Bengal, having a big chunk of the state’s 17 per cent Muslim population, is a ballot battle to watch out for, especially because of the surprise it pulled in the last Assembly election.

Seemanchal’s four districts have been seen to hold up Muslim support for the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) famed Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) formula—until they didn’t. In 2020, Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM grabbed five seats, contributing to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) upper hand in the region and the state. The NDA—comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United JD(U) and others—won 12 seats; the then Mahagathbandhan, including the Congress and the RJD, clinched seven.

There are a couple of factors why political parties are going out of their way to woo voters in the Seemanchal region. The major factor is the Muslim population. Though Bihar has 17.7 per cent of Muslims in its 13.07 crore population—as per the 2023 caste-based survey—the Seemanchal districts buck the trend with a much larger share of their population. Purnea has over 40 per cent of Muslims, Araria 43 per cent, Katihar 45 per cent and Kishanganj has 68 per cent. A sizeable presence of Yadavs and the Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) also influences the political mathematics of the region.

The other major factor is poverty and the lack of development. The Seemanchal districts are ranked among the poorest not only in the state but also in the country. As per the National Family Health Survey-V (NFHS-V), conducted in 2019-21, the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty ranged between 44 and 52 per cent of the population in the four districts.

This election, four players are vying with each other for a bigger share of the Seemanchal pie and pulling out all stops for it—the NDA, the INDIA bloc, the AIMIM (that has formed a third-front alliance with Chandrashekhar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party and Swami Prasad Maurya’s Apni Janata Party), as well as Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP).

The NDA is betting more on the development aspect in its campaign in the region. For instance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a public rally at Purnea in the presence of Nitish Kumar on September 15, inaugurated a new civilian airport, flagged off the Vande Bharat Express, announced the establishment of the Makhana (foxnut) board, and talked about the motorway to Patna and industries. Home Minister Amit Shah was another key campaigner who addressed rallies in Purnea and Kishanganj.

Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, along with Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD and other partners of the INDIA bloc, dashed through the region in August during the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’. While leading the Yatra, Gandhi focussed on farmers’ issues, poverty, unemployment and agriculture. Rare moments of camaraderie between Yadav and Purnea MP Rajesh Ranjan (Pappu Yadav) grabbed headlines.

Of 24 seats in Seemanchal, 11 were won by Muslims in the 2020 Assembly elections. While it was thought to be a bipolar fight between NDA-INDIA-AIMIM, Prashant Kishor’s JSP has emerged as the fourth player. The party’s challenge, however, is formidable as Seemanchal’s political loyalties are deeply entrenched, and in many parts of the region, allegiance is mediated through local-level networking. The RJD, the Congress and the AIMIM have long cultivated these networks. While Kishor’s campaign has generated noise, building the organisational muscle to convert curiosity into votes is proving harder.

What has been Owaisi’s strategy this time? In 2022, four out of the five MLAs of AIMIM in Bihar joined the RJD. It is believed that the four switched over to the RJD, as they noticed a law of diminishing returns catching up with their parent party, AIMIM, in Bihar’s neighbouring states. Having won from Muslim-dominated constituencies in Bihar’s Seemanchal region, the four MLAs clearly considered RJD as a better bet for future elections.

Owaisi kicked off his Bihar election campaign this year with the ‘Seemanchal Nyay Yatra’ from September 24 to 27. The aim of the yatra was to unite people for development and justice, particularly in Seemanchal. Owaisi has long highlighted Seemanchal’s backwardness and introduced a private member’s Bill in Lok Sabha seeking a Seemanchal region development council under Article 371 to address the region’s developmental gaps.

In 2020, the party contested 19 seats, winning five. This election, AIMIM announced 25 candidates, including two non-Muslim candidates, focusing on the Seemanchal region. AIMIM’s decision to field two non-Muslim candidates—Rana Ranjit Singh from Dhaka and Manoj Kumar Das from Sikandra —underscores Owaisi’s long-term strategy to reposition the party as a social justice-oriented, multi-community platform not confined to Muslim-majority constituencies.

The common narrative between the two elections has been the issue of ghupethias (infiltrators)¬—widely understood to mean undocumented Bangladeshi Muslim migrants. BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, frequently raised the issue during campaign rallies, particularly in the minority-dominated Seemanchal region of Bihar. They accused rival parties (Congress and RJD) of protecting these alleged infiltrators for “vote bank politics” and warned that a Mahagathbandhan government would lead to widespread infiltration. This year, too, the issue kept propping up in election campaigns and rallies.

As Bihar prepares to choose its next government, the Seemanchal region—often described as the “backward region of a backward state”, and where the Muslim population forms a majority—is gearing up to vote. In approximately 10 days, it will be clear whether Seemanchal will continue with its trend of springing a surprise and who will manage to win the four-cornered election.