A few months before the Bihar elections to be held later this year, there is an restlessness inside the JDU. The party leadership had declared its support for the Waqf Amendment Bill, which was passed in both houses, 288 votes in the Lok Sabha and 128 votes in the Rajya Sabha.
Soon after the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha, five Muslim leaders of the party resigned, while some others have expressed their disagreement on the bill.
JDU leaders resign
JDU Minority Front State Secretary Mohammad Shahnawaz Malik, Mohammad Qasim Ansari, Tabrej Siddiqui Alig, Nadeem Akhtar and Raju Nayar have already resigned. While JDU) General Secretary and former Rajya Sabha MP Ghulam Rasool Balayavi has also resigned. So at the same time, JDU) MLC Ghulam Gaus has spoken against the party line.
This concern of JDU leaders is based on the fear of defeat on Muslim vote bank before Bihar elections. However, this fear may be valid at first sight, but the figures present a different picture. Whereas in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Nitish Kumar had obtained a large part of the Muslim votes, separating from the Modi -led NDA, which led to a dent in the primary vote bank of RJD. But the study of the situation after 2015 presents a different picture.
When Nitish Modi was in an anti -Nitish Modi camp in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2015 assembly elections, he had a good hold between Muslim voters.
According to the CSDS Lokniti Post Pol survey, when JDU contested in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in an alliance with the communists, he got 23.5% Muslim votes, while in the 2015 assembly elections, when Nitish was part of the grand alliance, the coalition got about 80% Muslim votes.
Statistics after 2015
After 2015, things changed when he joined the Modi -led NDA alliance. In the 2020 assembly elections, the JDU alliance could get only 5% Muslim votes. This was a huge decline compared to the votes of JDU due to the RJD alliance in 2015 and JDU alliance was voted by only 6% of the Muslims as against 80% of RJD in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The same situation continued in more or less the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, when only 12% of Muslims voted for the JDU alliance, which was about 50% less than the 2014 situation.
At the same time, according to the 2011 census, the Muslim population of Bihar was recorded at 1,75,57,809 (1.75 crore), which is 17% of the total population of the state.
According to the Lok Sabha data of 2024, Bihar has a total of 7,64,33,329 (7.64 crore) registered voters. If we add the proportion of Muslims according to the 2011 census, which is 17% of the total population, then the estimated number of Muslim voters in Bihar will be around 1,29,93,667 (1.29 crore).
Who did Muslims vote in Bihar? (Received from CSDS)
| Coalition | Lok Sabha Elections 2024 | Assembly Elections 2020 | Lok Sabha Elections 2019 | Assembly Elections 2015 | Lok Sabha Elections 2014 |
| JDU alliance | 12% | 5% | 6% | 80% | 23.5% |
| India Block/MGB | 87% | 76% | 80% | 65% |
Now if we look at the Muslim -dominated districts of Bihar, then we take four districts, where the Muslim population is more than 30% of the total population. Overall, these districts are spread in 24 assembly constituencies, out of which JDU won 7 districts in the 2015 Lok Sabha elections when it was part of the Grand Alliance. While fighting with NDA in 2020, JDU won only three districts.
From this, it is clearly known that whenever JDU has joined hands with the NDA led by PM Modi, then he has lost the support of Muslims.
Muslim dominated district in Bihar (Census 2011 and Election Commission of India)
| Percentage of Muslim population of districts | Assembly near JDU after 2020 | Assembly near JDU after 2015 |
| Kishanganj 67.98% | 0/4 | 2/4 |
| Katihar 44.47% | 1/7 | 0/7 |
| Purnia 38.46% | 1/7 | 2/7 |
| Araria 42.95% | 1/6 | 3/6 |
| Total | 3/24 | 7/24 |
Apart from this, we also see how different the performance of JDU’s slogan Muslim candidates have been with the NDA led by PM Modi and how he has performed without NDA.
According to electoral data, in 2015, JDU fielded seven Muslim candidates and five of them won the election. However, despite fielding 11 Muslim candidates in 2020, no JDU candidate could emerge as the winner.
How was the performance of JDU Muslim candidates (source: ECI)
| Year | How many Muslim candidates contested elections | How many candidates won |
| 2015 | 7 | 5 |
| 2020 | 11 | 0 |
This clearly shows that after 2015, JDU had to lose his Muslim vote bank due to alliance with BJP. Not only this, to field a large number of Muslims in the year 2020 also did not prove to be effective for Nitish Kumar’s party.
Now, due to supporting the Waqf Amendment Bill, this principle of depriving JDU of Muslim votes will prove wrong, because after 2015 the party never had a Muslim vote bank.
Avish Kant- Research Team