Patna: With just one day remaining for nominations in Bihar’s first-phase constituencies, the INDIA bloc remained without a seat-sharing formula, though coalition parties secured election symbols for their candidates without a formal announcement.
On the other hand, all five partners in the ruling NDA were through with announcements of candidates, from respective parties, for all 243 assembly segments.
Former state BJP president and Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary and a number of his cabinet colleagues, including JD(U)’s Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, were among those who filed their nomination papers on a day bigwigs from other states like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath flew down to spice up the election campaign.
Prominent among other BJP leaders from outside the state who were seen in various parts of Bihar for addressing public meetings organised after filing of nomination papers by NDA candidates included Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, his Chhattisgarh counterpart Vishnu Deo Sai and former Union minister Anurag Thakur.
The BJP has pulled out its famed heavy artillery in the poll-bound state where Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in the evening, on a three-day tour during which he is scheduled to address election rallies besides interacting with various sections of the public.
The day also saw filing of nomination papers by Tej Pratap Yadav, RJD president Lalu Prasad’s elder son who was expelled from the party a few months ago and has now given up his sitting seat of Hasanpur in favour of Mahua, adjacent to younger brother Tejashwi Yadav’s Raghopur constituency, from where he had made his debut a decade ago.
Among the NDA constituents, BJP had made public its candidates for all the 101 seats it would be contesting late Wednesday. Thursday, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which is fighting as many seats, also managed to catch up.
As expected, OBCs and EBCs, the catchment area of the JD(U), form a majority of the 101 JD(U) candidates, though a low representation of just four Muslims may provide some cannon fodder to the opposition which has been questioning the longest serving CM’s “secular credentials” over his alliance with BJP and inability to take an independent stand on issues like Waqf.
The chief minister, who is said to be not in very good shape and has not been seen in public for quite some time, took time off to travel to a number of districts, for boosting the morale of NDA candidates, some of them from his own party.
Smaller NDA allies like Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Hindustani Awam Morcha, headed by Union ministers Chirag Paswan and Jitan Ram Manjhi, respectively, besides Rajya Sabha MP Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha, have all announced candidates for their respective quota of seats.
An amicable seat-sharing solution continued to elude the INDIA bloc and leaders were kept wondering whether they might end up having “friendly fights” in some of the constituencies.
RJD president Lalu Prasad continued giving party symbols to candidates from his residence, and so did state Congress president Rajesh Kumar, though neither party has come out with a consolidated list which could give an idea of how many constituencies the respective parties were going to contest.
CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya also said his party has given tickets to 18 candidates, for the seats going to polls in the first phase, “and a couple more” were likely in the second leg.
Vikassheel Insaan Party chief Mukesh Sahni, the newest entrant in the opposition alliance, found himself unable to stomach the deal, details of which were not known, offered by the NDA or strike a better bargain with the NDA, and he kept announcing and postponing, through the day, a press conference which he finally never addressed.
Meanwhile, the Jan Suraaj Party, which takes pride in bringing in mostly “fresh faces”, ended up inducting Sarfaraz Alam, who was formerly associated with the RJD and JD(U) and had enjoyed terms in the Lok Sabha and the assembly on these parties’ tickets.
Alam, who has a criminal background like his late father Taslimuddin, a heavyweight of the Seemanchal region, joined Jan Suraaj Party in presence of founder Prashant Kishor, who has been claiming that the one year old party will “not field any tainted candidates”.
Speculations are rife that Alam will get a ticket from Jokihat, which is currently held by his younger brother Shanawaz, who had won it on a ticket of Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM but later defected to the RJD.
Orissa POST – Odisha’s No.1 English Daily
