Wanted no more in Bihar

On July 18, the same day as over two dozen constituents of the national Opposition front came together in Bengaluru for their second conclave, Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav, one of the most popular don-turned-politicians in Bihar and five-term Lok Sabha MP, was dejectedly addressing a press conference in Patna to express hurt over not being invited to the meeting. Yadav, who heads the Jan Adhikar Party (JAP) and enjoys clout in the Kosi region, recounted how he had appealed to Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal-United (JD-U) supremo Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) boss Lalu Yadav, and even the Congress for entry into the state’s Mahagathbandhan (MGB) fold, only to be ungraciously snubbed. It was just last year that the Congress had nominated his wife Ranjeet Ranjan to the Rajya Sabha—but then, as a forceful orator in Parliament, she has an independent political existence.It’s rough weather for Bihar’s once-powerful bahubalis these days. Part-Robinhoods, part-caste lords, part-social influencers and part-musclemen, today they find themselves being cast aside ahead of the 2024 polls, partly thanks to Nitish’s split with the BJP last year and his alliance with the Congress, RJD and the Left. It’s more a course in logic than ethics, though. The move altered Bihar’s political theatre, turning it into a two-front battle between the MGB and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and consequently shrinking the space for such ‘one-man armies’. So, apart from Yadav, there is also former MLA Anant Singh a.k.a. Chhote Sarkar, the once-prized strongman now left twiddling his thumbs in Patna’s Beur central jail after his conviction in an Arms Act case. Incidentally, the RJD had just last year backed Singh’s wife Neelam Devi for the Mokama assembly bypoll after her husband’s disqualification, and she even won the election. As for the controversial release of convicted killer and politician Anand Mohan Singh in April, if there was any speculation that the MGB would welcome him in a bid to sway Rajputs away from the BJP, nothing has materialised so far, with no prominent politician seen rubbing shoulders with him. In the same spirit, if the MGB has turned its back on the likes of Pappu Yadav, Anant Singh and Anand Mohan Singh, the NDA has slammed its door shut on political profiteers like Mukesh Sahani, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) chief. Though the saffron party is believed to have made some initial overtures to him, those didn’t lead to an invite for the NDA meeting in July, reportedly because the group can’t spare the number of seats the ambitious Sahani is seeking. “An acutely clear two-front battle has its advantages,” says a BJP leader. “For instance, even the fence-sitters or somewhat disillusioned supporters choose to back their parties, as they know their party will lose in the zero-sum game if they dither. Given such a scenario, why would a party need a bahubali to consolidate votes?”Despite his words, data has shown how the BJP gains from triangular contests in Bihar. In 2014, when the JD(U) and RJD fought each other, the NDA won 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats. But just a year later in the 2015 assembly polls, the united Lalu-Nitish-Congress team ended up slicing away 178 of 243 assembly seats. Well aware that this time it doesn’t have the luxury of either a tri-front battle or a formidable JD(U) by its side as it did in 2019, the BJP is reportedly planning to go back to its 2014 strategy of contesting 30 Lok Sabha seats on its own and leaving the remaining 10 for its four allies—Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Pashupati Kumar Paras’s Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party, Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal. Clearly, there’s no space for more players, and given that Bihar sends the fourth-highest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha after UP (80), Maharashtra (48) and West Bengal (42), no space for risk either.As things stand now, while Pappu Yadav has given Congress time till August to decide on his entry into the MGB, Sahani is travelling across the state in a luxury, gold-interior bus, claiming that his Nishad votes can influence the outcome in some 60 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. Neither MGB nor the NDA have taken note of his yatra so far. The last footage of Anand Mohan Singh was of him swinging a lathi on Muharram in his hometown Saharsa. As for Anant Singh’s fate, the Bihar police on July 18 lodged a fresh FIR against him after he allegedly attempted a jailbreak and attacked prison staff; his MLA wife Neelam Devi could do little more than take to X (formerly Twitter) and tag Tejashwi Yadav to call the MGB’s attention to the alleged violence against Singh in jail. No country for these old men after all, it seems.Edited By: Arindam MukherjeePublished On: Aug 10, 2023Must Watch

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