At the prestigious Patliputra parliamentary seat when voters queued up to exercise their franchise on Thursday, RJD candidate Misa Bharti making her political debut, appeared quite confident and declared that she would win the poll, ‘though didn’t know with how many votes’. But, a few hours after she was accused of banging an EVM machine to the ground and flee away from there.
RJD chief lalu Prasad’s political stake is quite high at Patliputra seat from where he has put his eldest daughter Misa Bharti in the race against his old time loyalist Ram Kripal Yadav who after being denied ticket had joined the BJP. Besides, lalu’s old time friend-cum-foe Ranjan Prasad Yadav, sitting JD(U) MP, too is in the race but on the polling day the contest appeared veering around Misa Bharti and Ram Kripal Yadav.
At Dehri village on booth No. 34 in Bikram area, Misa Bharti was accused of breaking an EVM machine and quietly slipped away from there. Villagers were seen complaining that the RJD candidate Misa Bharti came at the booth and got furious over something and banged the EVM to the ground. later, she slipped away from there.
Supporters of Bharti, though, charged that when she came to the booth there was some commotion going on and it was the BJP supporters who actually broke the voting machine, not Bharti. “On the contrary they leveled charge against her for breaking EVM,” said one of her supporters.
However, people voted in the constituency on peaceful note and while traversing the constituency length and breadth it was found that both the contestants were in the ring for a very close fight. Most of the Yadav voters, traditional supporters of lalu Prasad, were seen rooting for Misa Bharti as “it has become a prestige issue for their leader lalu Prasad to win the seat” whereas majority of non-Yadavs and upper castes voters were seen voting for BJP candidate Ram Kripal Yadav.
“Ram Kripal Yadav is quite a popular leader here and is always accessible to us in every situation. Now, as a bonus he is also getting advantage of NaMo wave in the constituency,” said Sugriv Yadav of Maner riverine area. Sugriv Yadav has been voting for lalu Prasad but when choice became apparent, he decided to vote for Ram Kripal Yadav as it would also help Narendra Modi to become the Prime Minister of country.
like him, the upper caste Ajay Singh of Bihta too said that voting for a down-to-earth leader like Ram Kripal has double advantage this time. “He is quite approachable and represents Narendra Modi,” he said. BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had also visited Bikram recently to address a public rally there which reportedly has turned the wind a bit in favour of Ram Kripal.
“Whoever wins its fight between Yadav and Yadav. It’s very difficult to say who will win this battle but one thing is sure that Ranjan Yadav is nowhere in the scene this time,” said Ramadhin Yadav, a retired schoolteacher of Bihar Bazaar.
Meanwhile, Ram Kripal Yadav too expressed hope that people of his constituency would not belittle him. “I’m their sevak (servant) and I hope they will now reward me with their votes,” said Ram Kripal Yadav exuding confidence that his win was just a formality.
However, locals said that Ram Kripal Yadav did a strategical error when during his campaign he focused more on villages dominated by Kurmis, EBCs and upper caste instead of Yadavs and ‘that could prove him dearly in the vote’.
“He might have thought that Yadavs would only vote for Misa-lalu so he concentrated on villages of Kurmis and EBCs of Masauri and upper caste of Bihta and Bikram whole neglecting the Yadav dominated villages of riverine areas and it has not gone well for him electorally,” rued Ramashish Yadav.
Earlier, lalu Prasad had even made Misa to touch feat of a don’s daddy to garner support of people of their area which, unfortunately, had not gone well for people extending their support to Bharti. “It has earned bad impact among his core voters”, complained Ram Jivan Singh of Maner.
In an another interesting development, Bihar Police chief Abhyanand could not caste his vote in Patna Sahib constituency as his name was missing from the voters’ list.
“My name is not in voters’ list, hence I am not able to exercise my franchise,” said Abhyanand. He said it had happened in the last elections time too. “Due to work pressure, I could not do the running around to get my name included in the voters’ list,” he further added.
From many polling booths reports of voting machines not working properly, names of voters missing from the voter's list and the number of voters ID card not matching with the number in the list came in from all the seven constituencies went to poll on Thursday.
Meanwhile, two infamous bahubalis of the State, JD(U) MlA from Mokama Anant Singh and lJP leader Suraj Bhan Singh were detained by police till the poll ended. The police said they were detained for the charge of intimidating voters. Suraj Bhan Singh’s wife Veena Devi is contesting the lok Sabha poll from Munger.