Voters demand jobs as daughter, son of two Bihar Ministers lock horns in Samastipur
Jobs, development, and revival of industries are the key demands of the voters of Bihar’s Samastipur (SCreserved) Lok Sabha seat, which goes to polls in the fourth phase on May 13.
The seat once represented by socialist leader Karpoori Thakur, who was recently conferred the Bharat Ratna, will see the daughter and son of two Ministers from the ruling Janata Dal (United) take on each other. While Shambhavi Kunal Choudhary, 25, daughter of Rural Works Minister Ashok Choudhary, is contesting on a Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) ticket; Sunny Hazari, 33, son of Information and Public Relations Minister Maheswar
Hazari, is the Congress candidate.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing a public meeting in Darbhanga on May 5 had said Ms. Choudhary is the “youngest Lok Sabha candidate of the country” and called her “his daughter”.
While JD(U) chief and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Ms. Choudhary’s father are campaigning in her support, Mr. Hazari, being a Congressman, is at a disadvantage as his father cannot campaign for him.
‘First priority’
“My rst priority would be the revival of closed industries and bringing in more industries and creating job opportunities,” Ms. Choudhary told The Hindu.
Mr. Hazari echoed the same sentiment in his bid to win the seat currently represented by Rashtriya
Lok Janshakti Party State chief Prince Raj, son of the late Ram Chandra Paswan, the younger brother of the late Ram Vilas Paswan.
The constituency has six Assembly seats — Kusheshwar Asthan, Hayaghat, Kalyanpur, Warisnagar, Samastipur, and Rosera.
The Rameshwar Jute Mill in Musepur village, under the Kalyanpur Assembly segment, is the lone active industrial unit in
Samastipur and has been struggling without adequate government support.
Started in 1934, the mill shut down over wage issues for over three years and resumed functioning in 2020. “We use 10,000 units of power per day, but don’t get any subsidy. Though spread over 55 acres, we only use 25 acres for production,” Abhishek Sharma, commercial manager of the Rameshwar Jute told The Hindu.
It gets orders from several States through the Jute Corporation of India and current production is 30 tonnes per day, with an annual turnover of ₹80 crore. At present, 2,000 families depend on the mill.
“We would have given jobs to more workers as we have the capacity to produce up to 80 tonnes. But we hardly get any support from the government. The jute reaches here from Assam and Bangladesh apart from other States. Despite being the only such facility in the constituency, the local MP and MLA have done nothing for us. In fact, their speeches have created trouble for us and the workers,” Mr. Sharma said.
Lost potential
Samastipur had a sugar mill, but it closed in 1997 during the Rashtriya Janata Dal regime. It has been over 26 years but the sprawling campus of the mill spread over 20 acres still lies unused. A signboard at the mill that reads, ‘Bihar Sugar Corporation Limited - Samastipur Unit; established in 1917’, is perhaps symbolic of the region’s lost industrial potential.
“The mill started production in 1921 with 8,000 quintals a day. The sugar made here was sent to maMill, ny States, it gave jobs to more than 2,000 workers, and nearly 10,000 farmers beneted. Now, the government has given this land to a Kolkata-based company, Winsome International Ltd., on lease for 60 years,” said Bablu Kumar, who runs a garment shop near the property.
Similarly, no eort has been taken to revive the Thakur Paper Mill in Jitwarpur, rue voters. This mill shut down in 1979.
Voters now recall the good old days and are waiting for the right leader to revive the lost glory of the constituency, which was rst represented by former Union Minister and Congress leader the late Satya Narayan Sinha. He occupied the seat till 1967.
Rivers like Kosi, Ganga, Bagmati, Kamla-Balan, and Budi Gandak run through the Samastipur district, which is also known as the entrance to Mithilanchal — an agricultural region producing large quantities of vegetables and spices.
“Tra¥c is a major issue in the town apart from waterlogging in the monsoon. The long-pending demand for a rail overbridge from Bhola Talkies to Muktipur Gumti has not been fullled. There has been no construction of bypasses in Rosera to ease tra¥c woes,” said Ravi Paswan, a resident of Magardahi.
This region has everything except job opportunities and sees a large number of people migrate in search of jobs, said Sashibhusan Prasad, an elderly resident of Mohanpur. “No matter who becomes the MP, they hardly pay attention to this consistency. This time, both are young candidates, let’s see how the winner performs.”