With Bihar’s second phase of Assembly polls for 45 seats in largely rural areas spread across six northern districts being held on Sunday, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s past magic and present makeover would face their real test due to the sizeable presence of the Yadav and Paswan communities in these former RJD-LJP strongholds.
While the ruling JD(U) and its ally BJP are contesting in 28 and 17 constituencies respectively, the RJD and its ally LJP are contesting in 34 and 11 respectively. The Congress and the BSP are contesting in all the 45 constituencies located in the districts of Darbhanga, Sitamarhi, Samastipur, East Champaran, Muzaffarpur and Sheohar, loosely known as the Tirhut-Mithilanchal belt.
The 45 constituencies include 12 new ones added after the delimitation exercise. In the last Assembly polls, the RJD had won 13 seats in this region while the LJP two, the JD(U) ten, BJP six, and Congress one seat. A total of 98.44 lakh registered voters, 45.64 lakh of them women, would cast their votes at 10,315 polling booths to choose from 623 candidates, who include 46 women.
The RJD, with its solid alliance with Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP unlike in previous polls, apparently has an advantage over the ruling JD(U)-BJP and the other main challenger, the Congress, in these 45 constituencies. The RJD-LJP’s nifty caste equations in their selection of candidates and the undercurrent of caste, if it works in the casting of votes, could help a revival of the two parties’ steadily sagging fortunes in this belt, say observers.
Prominent candidates whose fate would be sealed in some of the 13,674 EVMs being used in this phase of the polls include RJD state chief Abdul Bari Siddiqui, JD-U state chief Vijay Kumar Choudhary, JD(U) minister and former Jananayak Karpoori Thakur’s son Ramnath Thakur, Dr Ashok Ram and Madan Mohan Jha of the Congress, Ram Vilas Paswan’s brother Ram Chandra Paswan, and JD(U) leaders Ramai Ram, Shahid Ali and Rameshwar Hazari.
About 45,000 officials would conduct the poling process while some 70,000 security personnel, including central forces, would guard the polling booths in the six districts. Live webcast of the polling would be conducted in 250 booths, said EC officials.