activities in pre-independence period. Despite speculation by the media, the Lalu-Nitish alliance trumped the BJP and its coalition partners, securing a majority of seats in the Bihar Legislative Assembly. The victory came with the largest ever increase in the number of the OBC candidates primarily from the Yadav, Kurmi and the Koeri caste; who were the core voters of the alliance. It was also reported that due to these three castes voting together after a long time since Kumar defected from Yadav's Janata Dal in the 1990s, the upper-caste representation reached its lowest at 23.9% in the Bihar assembly. Splits and mergers in the JD(U) and emergence of new coalitions The Janata Dal (United), a successor of Samata Party, replaced the Rashtriya Janata Dal in the period after misgovernance of Rabri Devi regime. The JD(U) however failed to remain intact amidst splits and defection created in it by some of the old leaders of party who defected from it on the ground of ideological conflicts. Upendra Kushwaha, who claimed to be the tallest leader of the Kushwaha caste, thus defected to found his own political party in 2013. Kushwaha had defected from JD(U) earlier too, but had returned to its fold due to poor performance of his party and conciliatory measures taken by JD(U) leadership to bring him again into the party. However, the defection of 2013 led to foundation of Rashtriya Lok Samata Party which gave impressive performance in 2014 elections to the Lok Sabha by winning three seats in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The performance of Rashtriya Lok Samata Party hadn't remained impressive afterwards, specially after Kushwaha brought it out of the National Democratic Alliance over the question of less seats allotted to it in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The party then contested the 2019 election as a member of Mahagathbandhan. The party performed badly again and the new alliance was sought with minor players like Bahujan Samaj Party and AIMIM in 2020 Bihar Legislative Assembly elections. The new coalition which was called as Grand Democratic Secular Front was successful in winning 6 seats in the elections but RLSP failed to win any seats despite having largest share of votes among its coalition partners. The RLSP however successfully deteriorated the caste equation of JD(U) in a dozen constituencies, which resulted in reduction of the number of seats of JD (U) to 43 in 2020 Bihar Assembly.