Mumbai: Bhartiya Janata Party's stunning defeat in Bihar elections has brought a wave of joy in the camps of Shiv Sena as the party outperformed its ally on several seats.
Shiv Sena, which contested over 100 seats in Bihar, trumped BJP at 35 seats, polling more votes than its ally, as per its mouthpiece Saamna. Shive Sena, which partners BJP at Centre and Maharashtra, failed to win a single seat but polled over 2 lakh votes in Bihar assembly elections.
The total Shiv Sena votes exceeded the NCP and the MIM tally, observed Saamna in a piece on Monday.
Shiv Sena secured 2,11,131 votes, 0.6% of total votes cast in Bihar.
The Bihar results, which were announced on Sunday, brought an astounding victory Grand-Alliance. Led by JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar the alliance secured 178 seats in 243-member assembly.
Other alliance partners, Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD secured 81 seats and Congress scored win on 27 assembly constituencies.
The BJP-led NDA, for which Modi had mounted an aggressive campaign, addressing more than 30 rallies in the poll-bound state, only bagged 58 seats. BJP on its own could win 53 out of the 157 seats it contested.
An editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana' also said that JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar's remarkable performance was due to several factors, the key being his "clean" campaign and honest image.
It said that one of the reasons behind the grand alliance's win was that Kumar did not lie and worked after taking the people into confidence.
"He did not make false promises, stopped hooliganism and brought law and order. He did not show off money and power. He went ahead with simplicity and during the course of campaigning, did not use uncivilised language. All this led to his victory," Sena said.
Taking a potshot at BJP, Sena said, "One can win an election using power and money only once, like you can make a fool out of a person only once... We do not know if crackers have been burst in Pakistan after Nitish Kumar's victory, but, in Bihar, crackers are certainly being burst."
Sena said that the message in the results is that humility is not an ornament used for show-off, but a self-protection tool.
BJP chief Amit Shah had said on the campaign trail in Bihar that "if by mistake BJP loses the polls, crackers will go off in Pakistan".
