Patna, Sep 18 (India Today) : Various opinion polls might be throwing up several projections but NDA's own assessment says that it will sail through in the Bihar elections with comfortable majority. While the BJP's exercise to gauge the mood of individual constituencies has been going on for the past couple of months, the latest assessment says that the NDA will bag roughly 160 to 170 seats. According to highly placed sources, the BJP believes that it will get somewhere between 123 to 130 seats.

On the contrary, the estimation for the rival Janata Parivar or Grand Alliance camp is rather bleak. The figures projected for the 'Mahagathbandhan' are just over 70 seats, of which Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal (JDU) is expected to be the biggest gainer. The NDA believes that Nitish Kumar would emerge as the biggest loser.

Mail Today was the first to report on the presence of Team Amit Shah in Patna to oversee the survey process and send assessment directly from the ground to the high command without involving the local state BJP unit. It was also the first to report of the seat-sharing formula for the NDA alliance.

The NDA maintains that the Nitish Kumar alliance with Lalu would prove to be the biggest reason for the undoing of the Janata Parivar, something that resonated in the words of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday. Jaitley lambasted the duo for having betrayed Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia's ideals by aligning with the Congress.

"Those who do politics in the name of socialist Lohia, are now visiting AICC for press conferences every day. The legacy of Dr Lohia has been destroyed by these people," he said while launching BJYM's nationwide Panch Kranti Abhiyan on the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday.

"Between them, JDU and RJD were in power in Bihar for 25 years, which amounts to a virtual political era, but still the Bihar model of development was holding the 21st position," Jaitley took a jibe at Kumar for daring the Prime Minister to debate over the issue of development in Bihar, saying that the state stood at the 21st position on ease of doing business in a World Bank report, far behind Gujarat which occupied the top slot.

Meanwhile, according to BJP sources, the NDA is banking on the beleaguered state of the Congress and are extremely expectant that its poor show in the 40-odd seats that it has been allotted in the Grand Alliance would bolster the position of the NDA.

"Most surveys are looking at the caste equation and caste strength of the respective constituents of the Grand Alliance, which is around 35 to 38 per cent on paper, thereby predicting their advantage. What, they are forgetting is that they are ousting from this consideration the rest of the 60 per cent voters of Bihar and the steep contrast between the defunct and regressive nature of Janata Parivar and the promise of development that the NDA poses,"said a Bihar BJP functionary.

Another Bihar BJP functionary pointed to the castewise strength of the NDA itself. "On the face of it, we too can yield over 30 per cent votes from Dalits, Mahadalits and Koeri caste. Having the forward castes in it, further adds to the tally," he said.

The NDA is also relying heavily on the damage Asaduddin Owaisi would do to the Parivar's Muslim votebank. Another encouraging factor in these elections which could throw a spanner in the gameplan of the Parivar is the projection of Tariq Anwar as the chief ministerial candidate of the joint effort of Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

During the last elections in 2010, the ruling JD(U) won 115 seats in alliance with BJP, which itself had bagged 94 seats. RJD had won 22 seats; Congress, four, and Lok Jan Shakti party, three.