A striking poster featuring Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar standing beside a tiger, captioned boldly ‘tiger abhi zinda hai’ (tiger is alive), appeared outside his residence on Friday morning, just as the NDA opened up a clear early lead in the assembly elections.

The poster, cinematic in its framing and unmistakably designed to project authority, quickly became a magnetic point for cameras and cadre alike.

It went up at around the same time the Election Commission began flashing the day’s first substantive trends.

The ruling NDA was ahead in 111 assembly seats, as compared to 33 of the opposition INDIA bloc, according to trends available on the Election Commission’s website.

The BJP was leading in 48 seats, the JD(U) in 44, LJP (Ram Vilas) in 13 and HAM in three. The RJD was leading

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