Patna, Oct. 9: L.K. Advani — scheduled to launch his Jan Chetna Yatra from Sitab Diara in north Bihar’s Saran district on October 11 — is yet to arrive in the state but that hasn’t stopped Lalu Prasad from engaging in hectic campaign against the BJP leader as well as chief minister Nitish Kumar.
For the past four days, the RJD chief is camping in Daraonda — an Assembly seat going to bypoll on October 13 — situated barely 40km from Sitab Diara.
“A chief minister then, I had got Advani arrested when he had started a yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya to demolish the Babri mosque in 1990. The present chief minister (Nitish Kumar) has reeled off a red carpet to the destroyer of the mosque and is going to flag off his journey,” the RJD boss repeated while trekking the muddy lanes of the sprawling constituency.
The death of sitting Doranda MLA Jagmato Devi of Janata Dal (United) has necessitated the bypoll in the constituency. The JD(U) has fielded Kavita Singh (26) — Jagmato’s daughter-in-law and newly wed wife of her son Ajay Singh — as its nominee on the seat.
Lalu’s attack on Advani and bracketing Nitish with the “communal” Sangh Parivar during his campaign for the bypoll is, apparently, linked to the grand political harvest that the RJD boss reaped by arresting Advani in October 1990. Advani’s arrest had overnight made him (Lalu) a messiah of the Muslims who along with the numerically preponderant Yadavs in the state formed the nucleus of the next 15 years of the Lalu-Rabri regime.
The embattled RJD chief has also decided to march to the Raj Bhavan on October 11 when Advani will begin his sixth rath yatra — the first from Bihar — from Sitab Diara.
Sources close to Lalu revealed that the RJD boss was trying to revive his lost magic by targeting Advani again. “Incidentally, Advani’s journey through Bihar coincides with the bypoll in the state. The developments have given a chance to Lalu ji to remind the people what Advani had done to Muslims and how Nitish is sitting in the communal forces’ lap. The people — particularly the minority community — will surely remember what had happened to them and will listen to Lalu ji,” said the RJD general secretary Ramkripal Yadav.
JD(U) general secretary Shivanand Tiwary shot back at the RJD boss and said: “Lalu Prasad is day dreaming. Rather than listening to him, the Muslims will recall how he (Lalu) had let the culprits of the infamous 1989 Bhagalpur riots’ cases escape from the dragnet of law and how the Nitish-led NDA government brought them to justice. The RJD will lose the Doranda seat with bigger margin than the 2010 polls to the JD(U).”
While Lalu — camping at a farmhouse of his party leader and imprisoned Siwan “don”, Mohammad Shahabuddin, on the outskirts of Doranda — has been intensively campaigning in the constituency, the JD(U)’s star campaigner, Nitish Kumar, appears to be confident of his party’s victory. He is scheduled to campaign in Doranda only for a day on October 10 — the last day of campaigning.
A “mentor” of Shahabuddin, whose name once struck fear in the region, Lalu has fielded Parmeshwar Singh as the RJD nominee on the seat. But then Nitish’s choice is not saintly either. Kavita Singh got married to Ajay Singh, a “don” named in over 12 cases of murder, abduction and armed raids, last month only during the period of pitripaksh (a month in which marriages or other auspicious rituals are forbidden).
Needless to say that Ajay, who is out on bail these days, has been contesting the polls by proxy on behalf of his wife. In fact, Ajay had married Kavita after Nitish denied him a ticket because of his involvement in criminal cases and suggested him to marry so that the party could give his wife the ticket.
Here in Doranda, Nitish appears to have been supporting a rule by proxy — a practice that Lalu indulged in by “appointing” his wife Rabri Devi as the state’s chief minister in 1997 — which Nitish opposed tooth and nail in course of his long journey to acquire power in Bihar. The Congress has fielded a Delhi-based businessman Kalika Singh and the CPI ML (liberation) has fielded its local cadre Jainath Yadav to contest the seat. But the battle, apparently, has boiled down to Parmeshwar Singh versus Kavita Singh or Ajay Singh on the seat.
Jagmato had won the seat by a margin of about 30,000 votes against the RJD in 2010 elections. “There is no reason for her daughter-in-law not to repeat her departed mother in law’s performance,” said a JD(U)worker at Doranda.
