By fighting Bihar polls, has the Opposition undermined its claims about ‘vote theft’?

From being a rebel threatening to boycott what he claimed was a hopelessly manipulated election to an eager chief ministerial hopeful who can’t wait for the “people’s festival of change” to start, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav has undergone a touching restoration of faith in India’s democracy.

Not too long ago, the fire-spewing Yadav politician saw no sense in taking part in the Bihar election. “If you have rigged the whole system and have already decided who will get how many seats, why bother with elections at all,” he told the media in July.

But from the moment the Election Commission on October 6 announced the dates for the polls, he has been a different man, cheering for the same election he had us believe was a farce. Yadav now even considers himself a shoo-in in a contest that he said had been gamed in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Yadav is not the only Opposition figure to have effected a volte-face. All the state’s Opposition parties that were until only recently protesting against what they claimed were the machinations of the Election Commission to skew the playing field for the BJP are game again to participate in the polls.

They are in hectic discussions to navigate intra-party rivalries...

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