The BJP’s political goat in Bihar has come face to face with nature’s monkeys in almost a tragicomic fashion in Saharsa district, where voting in the first phase of Assembly polls is scheduled for Thursday.
Apparently unmoved by the ruling BJP’s manifesto promising free goats to BPL families, thousands of villagers in two Assembly constituencies have decided to cast their votes only to those candidates who promise to ensure credible government intervention to prevent hundreds of local monkeys from damaging their crops and injuring their children every year.
In Simri Bakhtiyarpur and Saharsa constituencies in this poor northern district, scores of villages are continually held to ransom by hordes of monkeys throughout the year, more persistently during the harvest season. The monkeys also often injure children engaged to guard the farms of paddy and wheat, and damage the roofs of houses.
“The monkey menace has been tormenting over 50,000 villagers dependent on agriculture in this area, but politicians have remained deaf to our constant pleas for help. We would use our votes to seek help this time,” said Chhotelal Tanti, an agitated Saharsa resident.
As the campaigns for the Assembly polls began, most villagers in these two constituencies found that politicians contesting the polls showed little interest in the issue in the beginning. But when the villagers got united and threatened to boycott the polls, nearly every candidate visiting these areas promised to solve the monkey menace soon after getting elected.
“We are less interested in the free goats in this part of Bihar. Some of our leaders have raised the monkey issue in the Assembly, but nothing has been done about it maybe because the government saw it as too small a local issue. The voters will teach lessons to many leaders this time,” said Ashutosh Jha, another Saharsa resident.