Angry villagers put up a bamboo barricade to block Nitish Kumar’s cavalcade. Picture by Mohan Mahato

Madhubani, Jan. 17: Residents of a small hamlet today forced Nitish Kumar to walk down the road leading to their village after the chief minister had given them the miss during his Seva Yatra.

Around 500 people of Prayagpur, a village dominated by Muslims, had lined up along the road since morning with garlands and flowers in anticipation of Nitish’s visit. But their smiles vanished when the cavalcade of the chief minister sped past and went to the nearby village of Bagha-Kushmar.

The people who had waited to give Nitish a rousing reception turned against him when they realised that the village did not figure on the VIP itinerary.

Incensed, the people — women included — promptly set up bamboo barricades along the road which the chief minister and his entourage would have had to take on their return journey. Some of them even used the microphone — installed in the hope that the chief minister would make a speech — to shout slogans against Nitish and his government — “Nitish Kumar road banao, Nitish Kumar wapas jao (Nitish Kumar, build the road… Nitish Kumar go back)”.

Around 1pm, as he returned from Bagha-Kushmar, where he inaugurated an approach road, Nitish and his cavalcade of over 50 cars were greeted by the barricades.

No amount of persuasion by the administration officials could pacify the villagers who wanted nothing short of the chief minister entering their village.

Nitish got down from his SUV and walked, with folded hands, about 50 metres to the place where the villagers had gathered in protest.

The villagers, assuaged by the chief minister’s gesture, brought to him a litany of complaints — some wanted their licences cleared, others were facing irrigation problems, a few wanted money — but it wasn’t quite clear why they wanted a road to be built, something they were screaming into the microphone.

Nitish didn’t stop though. He continued to walk down the road as his security personnel, helped by the now-calm villagers, started clearing the barricades and heard the complaints hurled by the people whose anger had ebbed having got their man, even if for only a while.

“All we wanted was for Nitish to stop at our village. He is as much our leader as he is anyone else’s. Now that he has come, we are happy,” said a woman as she dismantled the bamboo barricade.

This wasn’t the first protest he faced during the day. Some women had earlier blocked the road near Rajkiya Ambedkar Residential High School at Balirajpur, but the barricades were removed by the security personnel.

At Bagha-Kushmar, Nitish announced what restive Prayagpur residents were clamouring for. “The government will get the road from Bagha-Kushmar to Barhara constructed very soon,” he announced, thanking the voters of the area for sending the NDA nominee, Satish Kumar Sah, to the Assembly with a huge margin during the 2010 Assembly elections.

But the relatively more important work that he carried out during his Seva Yatra in Madhubani district today was the inspection of the 2,200-year-old Balirajgarh Fort, a site of great archaeological importance. He asked V.K. Choudhary and A.K. Sinha, officials of the Archaeological Survey of India accompanying him, to get the site excavated.

The chief minister, who has been on a spree to improve places of cultural and historical importance in the state, shared several anecdotes related to the ancient fort which also happens to be a landmark of Madhubani district, referred to as the heart of north Bihar’s Mithila region.

An old woman told a tale to Nitish: “No villager musters the courage to bring the brick of the fort. The one who brings it suffers heavily. The fort guards the villagers from all evils. The Balirajgarh village has not witnessed a single death from snakebite.”

After spending over an hour at Balirajgarh Fort, Nitish inspected a government-run residential high school at the village and enquired about the food and other facilities being given to the students. The students expressed their satisfaction on the food but complained about the lack of teachers and the ill-maintained building — which, they said, leaked during the monsoon.

Nitish directed officials to repair the building and look into the sanitary facilities.