Not too long ago, Bihar's former director general of police Ashish Ranjan Sinha used to be a familiar fixture in Lalu Prasad Yadav's meetings. A close associate of the RJD chief, he was certain of his candidature from the prestigious constituency Nalanda. When this central Bihar seat went to the Congress under the seat-sharing arrangement, he had reason to be upset. However, Congress was more upset than Sinha. It had no suitable candidate to take on the JD(U) – Nalanda is Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's home turf. Both Nitish and Sinha are natives of Nalanda district and belong to the Kurmi caste.
Eventually, the Congress went on to request Lalu to "donate" a candidate as well. Finally, on Tuesday morning, Sinha after much persuasion by the RJD chief, rushed to the Sadaquat Ashram, the state headquarters of the Congress, and got its membership. Minutes later, he was announced the Congress candidate for the Kurmi-dominated Nalanda seat where no candidate other than Nitish himself or his loyalists have won in the past six elections held since 1996.
Has the Congress been vanquished in Bihar? Representational image. AFP.
The situation was similar in northern Bihar's Balmikinagar seat. Even though the Congress got this seat from the RJD, it had no candidate to field. With time running out fast and no suitable candidate in sight, the Congress again rushed to the RJD for help.
Finally, Purnamasi Ram, the rebel JD(U) MP, who was in touch with the RJD for a ticket, was asked to hurriedly get the membership of the Congress. Yesterday he was finally inducted into the Congress. Now Ram is all set to be the Congress candidate for this seat.
Significantly, the Congress had been seeking at least 15 seats from the RJD but had to settle for 12. The irony is hard to miss. A couple of decades ago, the party had no political challengers worth the name in the state. Now it has to survive on borrowed candidates.
However, this is not a situation unique to the Congress. Most of the frontline parties are struggling to find the right candidates. The BJP which had been claiming all along that there was a strong Narendra Modi wave in the state, has been busy importing candidates for seats. The party has given nearly half the tickets to outsiders and turncoats. While the party left 10 of the total 40 LS seats to its allies, of the remaining 30 as many as 11 were left for people who were highly critical of Modi or the BJP till a week ago.
Nitish's JD(U) has left all parties behind in the matter of fielding outsiders. It has given tickets to16 outsiders/turncoats. Of them, 14 joined the party barely a few days ago after being denied tickets in their parent parties. There has been strong protest from the party workers, but like in case of other parties, they have been bulldozed into silence. A senior minister – Renu Kushwaha - has already resigned her post in protest.
"There were many deserving candidates in the party and all the top leadership needed was an eye to spot them," remarked Transport Minister Brishen Patel who has now rebelled against the party leadership for denial of ticket for Vaishali seat. Patel, a fellow casteman of Nitish and his friend since the Samata Party days, even held a meeting with his workers yesterday to oppose the lack of "internal democracy" in the party saying "I will continue openly opposing the whimsical distribution of tickets while staying in the JD(U)".
Even more interesting is the case of Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP. The party was spared seven seats by the BJP under the pre-poll sharing arrangement. However, finding no candidate for the Khagria seat, it roped in Mehboob Ali Kaisar, former state Congress president. The RJD, on the other hand, gave tickets to only five outsiders out of its total share of 27 seats.
"Opportunism is at its worst in politics today. Now, politics has nothing to do with principles, ideologies or moral values; all that matters today is somehow get the power," wondered a veteran Gandhian Dr Razi Ahmad.
"The prime reason behind it, I think, is that parliamentary politics is still rooted in caste and creed. It is yet to move towards development-oriented politics," explained a prominent social scientist Prof DM Diwakar who happens to the director of Patna-based AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies. According to him, politics is yet to come out of parochial identity, and hence there is a mad scramble among various political parties to give tickets to leaders having their hold over caste and creed no matter they are in the rival parties.
"Thus, a leader's ideology, flag and parties get changed overnight. What does not change at all is leader himself. This is the biggest farce of today's politics," added Prof Diwakar.
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