Khushwaha’s party ready to consider BJP’s candidate as CM aspirant
RLSP made it clear that if the NDA decides to contest the Assembly elections under the name of PM Modi, it will withdraw Kushwaha’s name since Modi is the ‘most acceptable leader’.
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav’s hold over Yadav voters in Bihar seems to be slipping. This was evident last week when jeers greeted Lalu’s announcement that he will field his elder son Tej Pratap Yadav from Mahua constituency of Vaishali district for the upcoming Assembly polls. Soon after, supporters of Tej hailed the announcement and raised slogans supporting him, but the Yadav-dominated crowd at the rally in Mahua began pitching for local RJD leader Jogeshwar Rai, who is eyeing the seat. Rai’s supporters even raised anti-Lalu slogans, which forced the former Bihar Chief Minister to retract his statement and assure the crowd that the candidate from Mahua will be announced after taking the views of local party leaders into consideration. The Yadavs, a core support base of the RJD, form the single largest segment in the OBC group. Their population makes up 12% to 15% of the total electorate in the state. RJD leaders said that Lalu is planning to launch his son Tej from Mahua and his younger son Tejashwi from Raghpur, Vaishali, the seat Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi had unsuccessfully run for in 2010. “There is a strong sense of resentment among the party leaders due to Laluji’s penchant for favouring his family members. In the 2014 general elections also, his attempt to establish his children in politics cost us a capable and loyal leader like Ram Kripal Yadav,” a senior RJD MLA said. RJD leaders are also upset that Lalu was contemplating fielding his daughter Misa Bharti from Danapur. Danapur comes under the Pataliputra seat, where Misa lost to Ram Kripal Yadav in the 2014 general elections. Many old RJD loyalists and close friends of Lalu have already deserted the party due to the latter’s inclination towards dynastic politics. With defections on the rise, political experts feel that Lalu can no longer claim to be the sole Yadav leader of the state. The Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), which had announced its leader Upendra Kushwaha as the chief ministerial candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the Bihar Assembly elections, has toned down its rhetoric, saying the announcement was “complementary and not contradictory”.
“If the BJP comes up with a chief ministerial candidate, we are ready to discuss it at the NDA forum. Naming our CM candidate does not mean that we are not ready to consider the BJP’s point of view,” RLSP secretary general Shivraj Singh told The Sunday Guardian.
The party also made it clear that if the NDA decides to contest the Assembly elections under the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it will withdraw Kushwaha’s name. “In that case, we will not even discuss the issue, because he is the most acceptable leader among the masses,” he said.
In its executive committee meeting at Hajipur last month, the RLSP decided that Kushwaha would be the CM candidate of the NDA for the Bihar elections, which had created a flutter in the NDA. Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) is also part of the NDA in Bihar. Kushwaha is a Union Minister of State.
The party has conveyed to BJP leaders that it would be a better strategy to contest the elections under the NDA banner, rather than under the BJP name. “It should not be a contest be- tween BJP and the NitishLalu grand alliance. Rather, it should be between NDA vs Lalu-Nitish. This way, we will be able to attract more voters,” the party leaders told the BJP.
While RLSP has considerable following among OBCs, LJP i s popular among Dalits. Former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi’s leaning towards BJP will also add to Dalit votes. BJP, on the other hand, has a good hold over upper castes and those opposed to Lalu Prasad Yadav. The combination — upper castes, OBCs and dalits — could make a winning formula, the party leaders argued.
The NDA received a shot in the arm this week, winning 13 out of 24 Legislative Council seats, sending the Nitish-Lalu-Congress alliance into a tizzy. The BJP contested 18 seats and won 12, while the LJP won one out of four. The RLSP did not win a single seat. The results of the elections for 24 Bihar Legislative Council seats from local bodies constituencies released Friday have cast a shadow on the newly formed alliance of the RJD, the JDU and the Congress.
Out of 19 sitting MLCs from the alliance only nine won, while the BJP improved its tally from 5 to 13 seats. One Independent and one LJP candidate won on the remaining two seats.
The results have already led to a war of words between the RJD and the JDU, with JDU secretary general K.C. Tyagi, a Rajya Sabha MP, blaming the RJD for the defeat and saying that there was lack of management by the RJD and that the alliance needs introspection. State JDU president Basistha Narayan Singh regretted the losses and said the victory of rebel RJD candidate Reetlal Yadav from Patna was a major setback for the alliance, as sitting JDU MLC Valmiki Prasad Singh came in third. Former Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP said that these results were a bellwether for the coming Assembly elections. Shivraj Singh, the secretary general of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, a key BJP ally said that the Assembly election results will also be similar, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will himself campaign in the state.
According to Patna-based political experts, the result showed that the Muslim-Yadav (MY) calculation of Lalu Yadav could not be translated into votes in favour of JDU candidates, as the deputy chairman of the Vidhan Parishad Salim Parvez lost from Saran, a stronghold of Lalu since 1977. BJP’s Sachidanand Rai, a Yadav, defeated Salim.
The BJP’s winning spree spread all over North Bihar, including Begusarai ,Darbhanga, Madhubani, Gopalganj, Siwan, Motihari, and even areas bordering Bangladesh, such as Katihar, Purnia and Kisanganj, which have traditionally been the weak areas for the BJP.
In the Saharsa, Kosi, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) candidate Nutan Singh won. The surprising win was credited to the husband-wife duo of Pappu Yadav and Ranjita Ranjan, both MPs who campaigned extensively for Singh.
Reetlal Yadav, a notorious criminal, managed to get elected from jail, but Ranjit Don and Hulas Pandey, both LJP nominees with criminal pasts and tainted images, lost. Reetlal Yadav and Hulas, the younger brother of JDU MLA Sunil Pandey, are accused of being involved in murder and kidnapping, while Ranjit is allegedly involved in leaking questions of entrance examinations like CAT and AIIMS and UPSC.