Raghopur, Oct 26 (PTI) The air is thick with anticipation in the Raghopur assembly constituency of Bihar, where more than 3.4 lakh voters are aware of the fact that they might be voting for or against the next chief minister.
Situated right across the Ganges from rural Patna, the largely riverine area of Vaishali district is no stranger to high-profile contests, having elected at least two chief ministers in the past – Lalu Prasad in 1995 and Rabri Devi five years later.
Their son and heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav, who made his debut from here in 2015 at the young age of 25, has now earned his spurs and been named as “chief ministerial candidate” of the INDIA bloc, which is helmed by his RJD.
It also includes the Congress and three Left parties, besides the Vikassheel Insan Party, which promises a chunk of votes of ‘Nishads’, a community of fishermen, whom the ruling NDA also woos with equal intensity.
Yadav, who is aiming at a hat-trick from the seat, reminded the people after filing of nomination papers that “this is not a run-of-the-mill election. It is an opportunity to transform Bihar by voting for change”.
The young leader has, in the last few months, caught the public imagination with a flurry of promises, some of which have been declared as unrealistic by sceptics.
He, however, believes it is par for the course when the fight is against a dispensation that has been in power for 20 years, for which he loves to use the term ‘khatara’, the Hindi slang for a rickety old car.
The Yadav community, the most populous among all caste groups in Bihar, accounting for more than 10 per cent of the total population, is said to be in a majority in Raghopur, where no candidate has ever won without getting a sizeable chunk of their votes.
The rise to prominence of Yadav, who is currently the leader of the opposition, has predictably electrified the community, which believes it is the chance to reclaim the political dominance that they enjoyed till the RJD was voted out of power 20 years ago.
A young voter who did not wish to be named, said, “The 20 years of Nitish Kumar’s rule has been marked by step-motherly treatment to Yadavs. The BJP, too, has been part of the game as it seeks to galvanise people from all other sections of the society, from the upper castes to Dalits, by raising the bogey of Yadav dominance.” However, Yadav’s principal challenger Satish Kumar, contesting on a BJP ticket, who had defeated Rabri Devi in 2010 as a candidate of Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), believes that he can play the proverbial “giant killer” again.
“Cliches make no difference to people’s lives. For long, Raghopur has been called a VIP seat. But what has its fame given to its people? Until the construction of a national highway close by, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it used to take six to seven hours to reach the district headquarters of Hajipur,” said the 59-year-old BJP candidate.
“Tejashwi Yadav has been the deputy CM twice. And, though the two tenures were short-lived, could he not get a degree college and a referral hospital sanctioned for his constituency? If he does not have that much of a political will, his boasts of transforming health and education in the entire state deserve to be taken with a pinch of salt,” he said.
Satish Kumar also insisted that his defeat at the hands of the young leader in 2020, by a huge margin of over 38,000 votes, was “mainly because of a split in the NDA”.
Union minister Chirag Paswan, who then headed the Lok Janshakti Party, had contested the last assembly polls independently. The LJP candidate had polled close to 30,000 votes, which, it is believed, would have largely gone to Satish Kumar had the party been in the BJP-led coalition.
Now the MP from Hajipur, the pocket borough of his late father Ram Vilas Paswan, Chirag is firmly with the NDA and is expected to throw his full weight behind all candidates of the coalition.
Meanwhile, there is little talk about Chanchal Singh, whom the Jan Suraaj Party has named as its candidate, after founder Prashant Kishor, who had promised a high-voltage contest by challenging Tejashwi Yadav on his home turf, chose to refrain from entering the fray.
According to the Election Commission, altogether 13 candidates are contesting from the keenly watched seat. One of them is 36-year-old Prem Kumar, a close aide of Yadav’s elder brother Tej Pratap, who has floated his own outfit Janshakti Janata Dal, after being disowned by the family, and is contesting from the adjoining seat of Mahua.
By all accounts, though, it is a straight contest in Raghopur, between the RJD’s CM-hopeful and his BJP challenger. PTI NAC RBT
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