Ready to go: CP Thakur, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan

Patna, Oct. 19: As L.K. Advani’s Jan Chetna Yatra crossed a bridge on the Sone at Koilwar a few days ago, an aide to the octogenarian BJP patriarch looked towards the river recalling how Mao Zedong, amid talks of losing health and control over the cadres, had swam through the turbulent Yangtze river at the age of 73 to re-establish his hold on China.

The aide, apparently, wished to convey that the 83-year-old BJP veteran — believed to be under pressure from the RSS and GenNext in the party to recede into an advisory role — had taken a leaf from Mao’s book. He drew a parallel between Mao’s aquatic feat and Advani’s 40-day yatra of 6,700km across India to prove that he was still potent enough to lead the country.

The aide said like Mao, Advani too, had notched up initial success, for he got Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar — the largest and strongest NDA ally — to flag off the yatra, which is presently in Karnataka, at Chhapra amid a gathering of nearly 1 lakh people. Nitish’s spirited support, admittedly, boosted Advani’s morale.

The yatra, ostensibly against corruption but actually for the resurrection of his charisma, has left on its trail several Bihar leaders to take out yatras across the state.

Bihar BJP president C.P. Thakur, RJD chief Lalu Prasad and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, all have planned yatras, which are largely seen as a step for their political survival.

Nitish, too, has planned a Seva Yatra from November 9. However, strongly entrenched in the saddle, Nitish’s pre-scheduled yatra is being interpreted as the move to consolidate on the gains that he has made by winning the 2010 Assembly polls and also the successive bypolls in Purnea and Doranda resoundingly.

But the plight of Advani and Thakur (80) — a Padma Shri awardee doctor — is almost similar. Despite being the state party boss, Thakur has, apparently, been relegated to a proverbial “figure head” status with deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, with Nitish’s backing, calling shots in the party affairs.

Sources close to Thakur, who had also resigned from his post ahead of the 2010 polls, accusing the party of “neglect”, confided that the doctor was taking up the Jan Hit Yatra (journey for people’s welfare) to get in touch with the masses and bolster his position. His supporters are working out on the date for the yatra, which is likely to begin in November.

The objectives of Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan’s yatras — to begin in November — are believed to be the same. Smarting under the successive loss in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, the embattled RJD leader is down but not ready to be out.

Lalu has planned what sounds befitting to his diction “pol khol (expose) or gaon gaon, paon paon yatra (in village after village on feet) — a date for which the party mandarins are in the process of fixing. Lalu’s yatra will be like a role reversal for him. The biggest crowd puller that he was once,“now, he has to reach out to the people to listen to him”, said Modi, adding derisively that Lalu is not ready to believe that rejected by the people successively, he has lost the capability to draw them at his meetings.

Paswan — once the tallest Dalit leader of Bihar — stands shortened manifold. He is the lone Rajya Sabha MP of the LJP as his lone colleague in the Upper House Sabir Ali recently deserted him to join the JD(U). Paswan, too, has decided to undertake a yatra across Bihar to expose the “nexus” between the “communal” BJP and Nitish Kumar.

Asked by a TV channel to comment on Lalu and Paswan’s yatras, Nitish jokingly said: “You better take your cameras to those leaders’ yatras.” Nitish, perhaps, knows that his rivals were fast losing their saleability in the media and also among the masses.