It’s a Yadav vs Yadav contest in ood-prone Madhepura
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad has represented Madhepura Lok Sabha constituency twice, in 1998 and 2004.
It’s a typical April day: the sun blazes out of a blank sky and scorching heat hammers the earth, leaving the roads deserted, silencing even the birds. Magan Yadav of Bhelwa-Ramnagar village in the Madhepura Lok Sabha constituency is busy chopping fodder for his three bualoes. Some things never change.
“Only Yadavs win from Madhepura seat and it will be the same this time as well, whether it’s the incumbent MP or the Opposition’s candidate,” he says.
Madhepura, which lies in the £ood-prone Kosi river valley, is known as the ‘Yadavland of Bihar’; only candidates from the Yadav caste have been able to win this Lok Sabha seat since 1968. Of the constituency’s more than 14 lakh voters, ve lakh are Yadavs, followed by nearly two lakh Muslims and 1.5 lakh Rajput voters. A popular adage says, “Rome Pope ka, Madhepura Gope ka (what Rome is to the Pope, Madhepura is to the Yadav)”
Socialist past
The rst of those in£uential Yadavs was none other than B.P. Mandal, who chaired the Second Backward Class Commission. Popularly known as the Mandal Commission, its recommendations were implemented by the then-V.P. Singh government at the Centre in 1990, a pivotal decision that led to the emergence of formidable regional parties in Bihar and neighborouring Uttar Pradesh. Decades earlier, Mr. Mandal, who hailed from an in£uential Yadav family of Murho village, was elected MP from Madhepura twice, in 1968 and 1977; he also served as the seventh Chief Minister of Bihar during a 30-day period in 1968.
Later, veteran socialist leader Sharad
Yadav won four times, in 1991, 1996, 1999, and 2009, though he also lost four times from Madhepura, in 1998, 2004, 2014, and 2019. Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad represented the constituency twice, in 1998 and 2004.
Madhepura has also been a bastion for socialist leaders, including Karpoori Thakur and Kirai Musahar, who represented the undivided Madhepura seat in 1952 and 1967.
In the shade of a bamboo groove at Jhitkia village, Sahyog Yadav, Sudan Yadav, and Janardan Yadav are playing cards as a tractor loaded with cattle fodder idles on the road. “The Madhepura seat result may surprise you,” they say. No matter what surprises lie in store, however, the man left standing at the end of the day will still be a Yadav.
This time the incumbent NDA MP Dinesh Chandra Yadav of the Janata Dal(U) is pitted against mahagathbandhan candidate Kumar Chandradeep Yadav of the RJD, an English professor in a Patna college, but also son of former Madhepura MP Ramendra Kumar Yadav ‘Ravi’.
After delimitation in 2008, the Madhepura seat includes six Assembly constituencies: Madhepura, Alamganj, and Bihariganj in Madhepura district, and Sonbarsa, Saharsa, and Mahishi in the neighboring Saharsa district. Of the six, JD(U) MLAs represent four Assembly segments while the RJD and the BJP represent one each.
Madhepura goes to the polls on May 7.