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| Lalu, Rabri at Misa's marriage (Source Rediff) |
For decades, he had ruled
people’s hearts with his earthy quotes, canny quick-wittedness and the “gift of
the gab” as the poor and the underprivileged classes considered him one of
their own. This time, however, colourful Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad
faces his biggest-ever challenge - of having to prove his hold over voters
while out of the political arena for the first time in 37 years after being
disqualified from contesting elections in view of his conviction and subsequent
sentencing in the multimillion-dollar fodder scam case.
The two Lok Sabha seats
where Mr Prasad’s prestige is at stake are Saran and Patliputra, in the eastern
state of Bihar, which sends 40 MPs to New
Delhi
While Saran (previously
known as Chapra) was his home constituency since 1977 when he became one of the
youngest parliamentarians elected to LS at the age of 29, he also tried his
luck from a second constituency, Patliputra, which came up after delimitation, during
the last LS polls. He won Saran but lost Patliputra to his one-time colleague
Ranjan Prasad Yadav.
Now, he is in dire need of
victory at both places because it is his wife and daughter who are contesting. Wins
in the two seats will give his career a boost, while a defeat will mean
vindication of critics who have targeted him for nepotism.
In Saran, Mr Prasad’s wife
Rabri Devi is locked in a straight contest with former minister Rajiv Pratap
Rudy of the Bharatiya Janata Party although Salim Pervez of Janata Dal-United
is trying hard to turn this into a triangular battle by upsetting the
traditional Yadav-Muslim vote bank of Mr Prasad. The former Union Railway
minister has made an emotional appeal to members of his caste to support him at
this critical juncture.
Mr Prasad represented this
constituency four times in the past.
Muslims voters look even
more polarised this time with Narendra Modi leading the charge of the BJP, coupled
with the party’s move to rake up the old, contentious issues of construction of
Ram temple at Ayodhya.
Last week, a dozen prominent
Muslim organisations held a meeting in the Phulwarisharif locality of the state
capital where they issued a formal “advisory” to the community, asking them to
strongly vote against “communalism”.
Community members were asked
to identify “dummy” Muslim candidates and to vote only for candidates fielded
by “secular” parties, and to prevent division in secular votes. Rabri, who had
entered politics when her husband was jailed in 1997 and twice became Chief
Minister of the state, was forced to contest this time because of his
disqualification. But she may be on a slightly less sticky wicket than daughter
Misa Bharti, who is locked in a bitter triangular fight with two former
strongmen who defected from her father's party, the BJP's Ram Kripal Yadav and
JD-U nominee Ranjan Prasad Yadav. Misa, like her mother, is making her
parliamentary debut. While the JD-U candidate banks on chief minister Nitish
Kumar’s development agenda, the BJP nominee hopes to ride the “Modi wave” and
anti-incumbency factor of both the UPA government at the Centre and Nitish
Kumar government in Bihar .
This constituency too has
significant number of Yadav voters but there is a possibility of a split in the
votes with three candidates from this community in the fray. It was for this
reason that the RJD chief had to rush to relatives of an alleged criminal, Ritlal
Yadav, to stop him from throwing a fourth Yadav hat into the ring. Ritlal, lodged
in jail on charges of murder and extortion, agreed after Mr Prasad appointed him
a general secretary of his party and promised to give his wife a ticket in the
next assembly election.
Source: Dawn
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