Sheohar: Around 11 am on a hot April afternoon, the NDA’s Lok Sabha candidate from Sheohar Lovely Anand was leaving the demarcated campaign office, Mangal Bhawan, at the heart of Bihar’s Sheohar town. “Neta ji aa rahe hai (the leader is on his way),” she said about her husband and former MP Anand Mohan Singh.
The supporters gathered at the office waited to catch a glimpse of ‘neta ji‘, and to assure him that Lovely Anand will win in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
At 12 noon sharp, the former Sheohar MP reached the campaign office where around 20-30 supporters and workers greeted and bowed to him.
Serving life term for his role in the 1994 lynching of Gopalganj district magistrate G. Krishnaiah, the gangster-turned-politician was released from jail in April last year when the Bihar government changed jail rules that previously barred remission of jail term of those convicted for murder of a public servant on duty.
His wife Lovely Anand is the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), candidate against Ritu Jaiswal of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as Sheohar prepares to vote on 25 May.
While Jaiswal is making this contest a battle of contrast by projecting it as a contest between “assassin of an IAS and a hard-working wife of an IAS officer who left luxury in Delhi to serve the people”, the voters and party workers of all the parties involved conceded that it is Anand Mohan, whose name looms large over Sheohar.
In September last, Anand Mohan was in the news when he threatened RJD Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha for reciting a poem by Om Prakash Valmiki, which spoke about the high- handedness of Thakurs (a synonym for upper castes), in the Upper House while debating the inclusion of backward castes in the Women’s Reservation Bill.
His son Chetan Anand, an RJD MLA, too, lashed out Jha, saying that “targeting any one caste is nothing but hypocrisy in the name of socialism”.
हम"ठाकुर"हैं!
सबको साथ लेकर चलते हैं!
समाजवाद में किसी एक जाती को टार्गेट करना समाजवाद के नाम पर दोगलापन के अलावा कुछ नही!जब हम दूसरों के बारे में गलत नही सुन सकते तो अपने(ठाकुरों)पर अभद्र टिप्पणी बिल्कुल नही बर्दाश्त करेंगे!#माननीय_संसद_श्री_मनोज_झा_के_विचारों_का_पुरजोर_विरोध!
— Chetan Anand Singh (@ChetanAmohan) September 26, 2023
People familiar with Anand Mohan’s rise remember that during Jayprakash Narayan’s movement in the mid-1970s, he emerged on the political scene of Bihar by torching some police stations in his home district of Saharsa. JP is said to have advised Anand Mohan, the grandson of freedom fighter Ram Bahadur Singh, to shun violence and join his movement.
But, he was never cut for JP’s style of politics. In 1980, Anand Mohan formed a local militia, Samajwadi Krantikari Sena, to challenge the strongmen of the Yadav community, most notably Arjun and Ghulab Yadav, in the Koshi region.
A long-time aide of the Rajput strongman told ThePrint that Anand Mohan first went to jail for murdering Ghulab Yadav, who had molested his soul sister and stabbed her groom to death. He further said that Anand Mohan surrendered only on the advice of former prime minister Chandrashekhar and Satyendra Narain Sinha, the then chief minister of Bihar, in 1989.
In all, Anand Mohan faced 47 criminal cases ranging from kidnapping to murder, attempt to murder and unlawful assembly.
His political debut as an Independent in the 1980 Bihar election from Saharsa resulted in loss to his arch-rival and then Congress heavyweight Ramesh Chandra Jha. From there, he contested the 1984 Lok Sabha election on a Janata Party ticket but failed again. His first electoral win came in the 1990 Bihar election when he defeated Congress heavyweight Lahtan Choudhary in Mahishi.
Manoj Lal Das Manu, a long-time associate of Anand Mohan, told ThePrint that when Lalu Prasad became the Bihar chief minister in 1990, Singh joined Chandrashekhar’s Samajwadi Janata Party (SJP) opposing the Mandal Commission report which advocated reservations for backward communities.
The 1991 Lok Sabha election marked the flashpoint between the Rajput strongman and Pappu Yadav, who worked as a confidant of Lalu Prasad and Sharad Yadav, who entered the poll fray finally in Madhepura after Anand Mohan was arrested for the murder of an Independent candidate, Manu said.
‘Kept Nitish waiting’
The aide said that Anand Mohan resigned from the SJP, when Chandrashekhar and Raghunath Jha supported the Mandal Commission’s recommendations, and then formed the Bihar People’s Party (BPP) in 1993.
The first challenge to the BPP came the next year when Lovely Anand was fielded for the Vaishali Lok Sabha bypolls. The Lalu Prasad-led Janata Dal fielded Kishori Sinha, another Rajput candidate and wife of former chief minister S N Sinha, to check Anand Mohan’s rise.
But George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar of the Samata Party threw their weight behind Lovely Anand. She also got the backing of Bhumihar strongmen Kaushlendra ‘Chhotan’ Shukla and his brother Bhutkun Shukla.
Manu said that after the assassination of Vaishali MLA Hemant Shahi in 1992, Anand Mohan had united the entire anti-Lalu vote base by supporting Shahi’s widow in the by-election. “That was the first time someone challenged the rise of Lalu by consolidating the upper caste votes (of Bhumihars, Rajputs and Brahmins), keeping Lalu on his toes,” he added.
Political analyst Shefali Roy, however, feels that Anand Mohan can at best be compared to BJP’s Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has substantial votes in a few assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh. “Anand Mohan Singh is at best a Robinhood of North Bihar, and a regional strongman with influence over some constituencies,” Roy said.
She further explained that the BPP contested in more than 200 assembly constituencies, including three where Anand Mohan himself contested, in 1995 and won only one.
The year 1994 marked a major event in Anand Mohan’s graph as Bhumihar strongman Kaushlendra Shukla, who supported Lovely Anand’s candidature for the Lok Sabha election that year, was shot dead by assailants when he was returning from his election campaign.
The Saharsa strongman incited a mob — which was leading a protest march in Vaishali against the killing of Shukla — that lynched then Gopalganj DM G. Krishnaiah who unfortunately was crossing the route.
Released on bail a fortnight after the IAS officer’s lynching, he successfully contested the 1996 Lok Sabha election from Sheohar with the support of the Samata Party.
Former mukhiya of Fatahpur villager Pappu Singh said that Anand Mohan came to Sheohar at the request of Jagdish Nandan Singh and Arun Singh, who were mukhiya of Sheohar and Shyampur Bhatha villages, as they were fed up with the unchecked power of Raghunath Jha, a Brahmin.
People in rural constituencies barely make any comment about the inaccessibility of Lovely and Chetan Anand, who is still the RJD MLA from Sheohar, when Anand Mohan visits the hinterland.
But, some BJP functionaries said that complaints of Chetan Anand’s inaccessibility was creating a negative momentum and hampering his mother’s candidature.
Referring to Anand Mohan’s standing in Sheohar, a BJP functionary said that while he is the driving force behind Lovely Anand and has influence over the people of Sheohar, his personality cult is also part of the problem.
“He does not care about the organisational framework which is essential for the smooth functioning of workers up to the booth level,” the BJP functionary said, adding that he has not done enough to balance the caste equation prevalent in the constituency.
The BJP pointed out that the incumbent party MP Rama Devi, who represents the Vaihsya community, has been replaced by Lovely Anand and the Vaishya community constitutes nearly 25 percent of the voters in the constituency, giving an edge to the RJD. Ritu Jaiswal comes from the Vaishya community.
Moreover, BJP functionaries shared apprehensions that Anand Mohan compounded his problems by getting involved in an argument with BJP MLA from Dhaka, Pawan Jaiswal, who holds considerable sway among the Vaishya voters in the constituency.
A few kilometres away in Duma village in Tariani block, Lalu Shahni has made his decision not to vote for Lovely Anand. Ironically, he has no problem with Anand Mohan and claims to have spoken his mind when the strongman was campaigning in his village.
“I told Anand Mohan not to contest for the JD(U). I told him that if he contested with a different symbol, we would have voted for him,” 70-year-old Lalu Shahni said.
Echoing Lalu Shahni’s sentiments, another resident Jai Chand Shahni said that this time, he would vote for Ritu Jaiswal of the RJD because the JD(U) is contesting in Sheohar.
“The strength of Anand Mohan is also his weakness. His image has created a forward versus backward battle and combined with the unpopularity of Nitish Kumar among backwards, the battle is tough for Lovely Anand this time,” a BJP functionary told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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