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Bihar Assembly Election 2020: RJD bastion set for triangular contest
All eyes in Bihar on Tuesday will be trained on one assembly constituency in particular -- Raghopur in Vaishali district. This where the political heir to Rastriya Janata Dal founder Lalu Prasad, his younger son and the party’s chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, is fighting for re-election to the House.
All eyes in Bihar on Tuesday will be trained on one assembly constituency in particular -- Raghopur in Vaishali district. This is where the political heir to Rashtriya Janata Dal founder Lalu Prasad and the party’s chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav, is fighting for re-election to the House.
For the 31-year-old, the stakes are high. It’s a prestige battle for Yadav; losing the seat will diminish his stature as the leader and star campaigner of the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) comprising the RJD, Congress and left parties seeking to end the 15-year reign of chief minister Nitish Kumar. Locals say it’s by no means a cakewalk for the RJD scion, who is in a triangular contest against candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) .
The BJP’s Satish Kumar, who had lost to Yadav in the 2015 election after winning the seat in 2010 from his mother, is back in the fray against the leader of the opposition, whom he accuses of neglecting the constituency and doing little by way of its development, a key BJP plank in the three-phase polls. “It’s a tight fight and the result could throw up a surprise. Much would depend on how Yadavs vote.... Rajput votes are also crucial,” said Arjun Rai, a resident of Bidupur, part of the Raghopur constituency. Located across the Ganga in Vaishali district, Raghopur has been an RJD bastion since the mid-1990s; Lalu Prasad represented the seat in 1995 and 2000 and his wife Rabri Devi from 2005 to 2010. In 2010, Rabri Devi lost the seat to BJP’s Satish Kumar, also a Yadav. In 2015, Kumar lost to Tejashwi Yadav.
The RJD is also worried about its organisational base being weak in the constituency this time because of the recent defection of former MLA Uday Narayan Rai-- a close confidant of jailed RJD chief Lalu Prasad-- to the ruling JD(U) -- a BJP ally. Rai is considered a prominent Yadav face in the constituency.
Poll managers of BJP candidate Satish Kumar say they are unfazed by Yadav’s attempt to rally around his community as the RJD’s CM candidate.
“Has Tejashwi worked for the constituency in the last five years?...There was big work in the constituency on the power and education front and healthcare during NDA’s rule,” said Ganesh Rai, a poll manager and BJP leader of Raghopur.
The BJP has deployed some of its heavyweights in the campaign for Kumar with defence minister Rajnath Singh addressing a rally on Friday. Poll permutations of both RJD and BJP have suffered a setback because of the LJP fielding a Rajput candidate, Rakesh Roshan, who can divide the crucial Rajput votes. “Voting in the constituency is always on caste lines . This time, there is a triangular fight but the LJP can only cut the votes of both the RJD and BJP,” said Randhir Kumar, a political observer.
