Gaya: One of the less discussed aspects of the somewhat humiliating defeat of NDA candidate Abhiram Sharma in the Jehanabad Assembly bypoll is that it means achhe din (good times) for agriculture minister and Gaya Town MLA Prem Kumar, says political analyst Ali Hussain.
Hussain, who teaches political science to undergraduates as well as postgraduate students, has based his assessment on the inevitable "social re engineering" that the NDA is required to do to regain its lost ground in the Magadh region that sends no less than four MPs to the Lok Sabha.
Three of the four Magadh division Lok Sabha seats are represented by upper caste candidates in the Lower House of Parliament. The Jehanabad defeat has come as an eye-opener for complacent-looking NDA leaders.
In Jehanabad, Extremely Backward Classes and Mahadalits, who are believed to have voted for the NDA in the 2014 parliamentary election, voted for the Grand Alliance candidate in the bypoll this time. This erosion in the crucial vo-tebank has set alarm bells ringing in the saffron camp.
Hussain's analysis is based on the assumption that to win back the EBCs, the NDA will have to give more importance to Gaya Town MLA and agriculture minister Prem Kumar, the BJP's EBC face whom former Union Minister and party spokesperson Syed Shahnawaz Hussain projected as BJP's chief ministerial candidate in the 2015 Assembly election. That the NDA badly lost the election is another story.
Prem Kumar, in any case, is the senior-most BJP legislator credited with seven straight wins in the Assembly elections. Prem, who has never lost any election, has been consistently improving his victory margin in consecutive elections. In 2015, he (Prem) trounced his Congress rival, Priye Ranjan Dimple, by a margin of more than 20,000 votes.
Twice in recent years, Prem, despite his impeccable record, was sidelined by the party leadership.
After the 2013 JDU-BJP break up, political analysts regarded Prem as the natural choice for the post of Leader of the Opposition. But it went to Nand Kishore Yadav, the Patna City MLA, five years junior to Prem in the Legislative Assembly. Prem played tantrums but ultimately reconciled to his fate, recalled senior Magadh division NDA leader Lalji Prasad.
Prem once again felt politically shortchanged when he was not only denied the post of deputy chief minister (after all he was publicly declared as BJP's chief ministerial candidate by Shahnawaz Hussain in an election meet held in Gaya town), rather he was given an apparently less important agriculture portfolio.
It is an open secret that, for several years now, Prem Kumar has been eyeing the Nawada and Aurangabad parliamentary seats.
Now is the time for Prem to fulfil his ambition of making a debut in Parliament. NDA can no longer afford three upper caste candidates in the four-member Magadh division, say Prem supporters in the party.
