Ever since the ruling JD(U) parted ways with its alliance partner BJP on June 16, the question that concerns both the political parties and others too in Bihar is to get winnable candidates for all the 40 parliamentary seats. A JD(U) leader and party MP recently had put this bare fact before Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at party’s two-day Chintan Shivir.
“From where do you get 40 candidates for all the parliamentary seatsIJ” asked the fuming JD(U) leader and Rajya Sabha member Shivanand Tiwari while addressing a party meet in Rajgir on October 28. Though, the top JD(U) leaders, explicitly disagreed with Tiwari but privately many agreed with the fact that the party has no suitable candidates for all seats.
However, the political pundits of the State said that the fact haunts all the political parties in the State and not just the JD(U). “Not one political party can say that they have eligible and strong candidates to contest for all the 40 seats,” said a political observer for State elections. In the last parliamentary poll in 2009, the JD(U) had won 20 seats while the BJP won 12 seats. lalu Prasad-led RJD had managed to win just four seats while the Congress could bag only two seats.
Eventually the divorce happened between the two parties, JD (U) and BJP, in the name of Narendra Modi and his growing popularity. However, with BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Modi’s successful Hunkar Rally in Patna on October 27, the State BJP appears to be in exuberant mood to get the maximum number of votes in 2014 Assembly elections, much to the chagrin of Nitish Kumar-led JD (U).
“At present we’re assessing our strengths and weaknesses in all the 40 parliamentary constituencies. We’re taking steps to strengthen our position where we’re weak”, said State BJP leader in the State Assembly, Nand Kishore Yadav. He also said that the Bihar BJP was meeting on Monday to review its position in all the parliamentary seats for the upcoming lok Sabha polls.
Yadav also put a challenge before the JD(U) leader and the Bihar CM to contest against him from his home constituency Nalanda. “If Nitish Kumar stands against me for the lok Sabha polls even from Nalanda I challenge to win just to show him what elections are all about,” dared the BJP leader and former Minister in the NDA Cabinet.
On the other hand, with lalu Prasad’s incarceration in the multi-crore fodder scam, the RJD seemingly is pulling all stops to present a brave face but the party insiders told The Pioneer that the absence of their leader would have much deeper impact than imagined in the forthcoming polls. The RJD leaders, however, are quite optimistic that lalu would soon get bail from the apex court and the party would get sympathy votes once he starts moving across the State.
“Once he starts moving in the State, after securing bail from the Supreme Court, the whole scenario will be changed. let other parties do and say whatever they wish to but our vote bank is totally intact, we’ll definitely take this message to our voters on how our leader was falsely implicated and sent to jail”, said RJD leader and MP Ram Kripal Yadav.
But, does the RJD have strong winnable candidates for all the 40 seatsIJ “We’re meeting soon to identify the candidates and our party will also have alliance with the lJP and other secular parties to defeat the communal forces and Nitish Kumar”, he said.
With the recent disqualification of lalu’s membership from the lok Sabha, all the three remaining party MPs — Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Jagadanand Singh and Prabhunath Singh— are Rajputs. Recently, party MP from Vaishali Raghuvansh Prasad Singh’s recent statement had caused heartburn among the potential alliance partners like lJP when he had said that alliance or no alliance, the RJD could contest all the 40 seats on its own under the leadership of lalu Prasad.
The lJP too appears to have shortage of candidates for all the 40 seats, if they would have to contest the polls on its own. lJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan, though, has said that he too has heard RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh’s statement but he would prefer to keep mum now in the larger interest of the alliance against both the BJP and Nitish Kumar in the State.
The Congress which had won just two seats in the last parliamentary polls has now been weighing the pros and cons of electoral gains while keeping both the parties —JD(U) and RJD — on tenterhooks as a possible electoral alliance partner in the State.
“The party is acutely short of candidates for all the 40 seats. From where it could manage the candidates when the very presence of the party has dwindled fast in most of the constituencies”, wondered a State Congress leader.
The party leader and spokesperson Prem Chandra Mishra, however, said that though his party was gearing up to contest for all the 40 seats but “we’re putting focus on 15 seats, where its candidates had got votes, from 90,000 to 2.25 lakh in the last lok Sabha polls”.
He also refuted the rumour that his party was going to have any pre-poll alliance. “The alliance with any party is not on our agenda”, he said.
But, the long-time political observers of the State said that the Congress might be in gaining position if it strikes an alliance with the RJD and the lJP in the coming general poll “in the name of secular parties to defeat the communal forces”. However, others said that the Congress being a national party would like to weigh both the parties JD(U) and RJD-lJP combine till the lok Sabha poll and make a need-based post-poll alliance with any of the two.
“Otherwise, in the present scenario the electoral prospect of the Congress party in Bihar appears quite bleak. They could barely manage to win some seats here and there depending on the local factors,” said one of them. The same is the situation with the left parties who are also severely short of candidates for all the 40 seats in Bihar. The State executive member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Vijay Narayan Mishra has said that his party has set its eyes on 10-15 seats “but the details are yet to be discussed”.
“We’ll discuss the issue at our party’s three-day executive committee meeting starting from Monday. After discussion we’ll send the details to our party’s national council and they will take the final decision”, said Mishra. Though, the left party leaders too, in private admitted the fact that it was very difficult for them to shortlist all the 40 candidates.