One Vs The Rest

BJP will give TRS a big fight in 2023 state polls. But it will worry about Bihar

The results of bypolls spread across six states confirm some established political trends: Telangana is shaping up to be aTRS vs BJP contest; Bihar’s gathbandhan poses difficulties for BJP; and Congress’s Jat over-reliance isn’t helping in Haryana. TRS’s difficult win in Munugode is a sure sign that next year’s assembly elections will be fiercely fought. CM K Chandrashekar Rao created an oppositional vacuum by constantly engineering defections in Congress between 2014 and 2019. Now he faces a far more formidable rival.