Cong scores double advantage

Sasaram, the hot and dusty Lok Sabha seat spread across Kaimur and Rohtas districts of Bihar, is famous for two reasons 8212; Sher Shah Suri who built the Grand Trunk Road lies buried here, and Jagjivan Ram, Congress8217;s premier leader of the Harijans before the word became discredited in the eyes of an assertive Dalit movement, won every election here from 1952 till his death in the 1980s.

The vocal support for Meira Kumar, though, has little to do with her father8217;s legacy. After all, she contested from Sasaram in 1989 and 1991 and lost both times. If she is third-time lucky, the reason would be the great unpopularity of the sitting BJP MP and the effectiveness of the RJD-Congress-Lok Janashakti Party alliance.

Almost everyone we meet on the road to Sasaram attack Munilal for doing nothing at all. And that Laloo supporters are rooting for Meira becomes clear from the kind of 8216;8216;Lalooisms8217;8217; they come up with. Says G.P. Gupta in Kudra: 8216;8216;Atal ke, satal ke, saare dabbe fail the Atal factor won8217;t work.8217;8217;

The local BJP-RSS leaders freely admit their only trump card is 8216;8216;Atalji8217;8217; and they are flogging it for all its worth. 8216;8216;The candidate is not the issue here, the only issue is Atalji,8217;8217; says Rohtas district RSS pramukh Duman Singh.

BJP workers have informally dubbed the PM 8216;8216;Atal Shah Suri8217;8217; in these parts, claiming he is the first leader since Sher Shah to have taken up the issue of roads. That is not an empty boast. For anyone driving down the Golden Quadrilateral, the old joke 8216;8216;Bihar seema prarambh; sadak samapt Bihar begins, road ends8217;8217; is no longer true.

Work on the GQ that cuts through four districts of Bihar is going on apace, and many stretches are far smoother than in UP. But as in UP, the 8216;8216;4-lane8217;8217; may be appreciated but it is no poll issue. And BJP efforts notwithstanding, most people see the polls as a chance to punish or reward sitting MPs, not PMs.

In neighbouring Aurangabad, for instance, the Congress is on a good wicket and one key reason is that it changed sitting MP Shyama Sinha with her husband, Nikhil Kumar. The retired Delhi Police Commissioner is the scion of one of Bihar8217;s best-known political families son of former CM S.N. Sinha and grandson of 8216;8216;bade Saheb8217;8217; Anugraha Narain Sinha who was the state8217;s biggest Rajput leader for decades.

But like Meira Kumar, he too cannot win an election only on the basis of the family name. It is the Yadav-Muslim-Dalit support base of the RJD-led combine that will help him in the tough three-cornered fight he is engaged in.

Aurangabad is known as the 8216;8216;Chittorgarh8217;8217; of Bihar because it is one of the few districts where the Rajputs dominate and the constituency has always elected a Thakur. But the supremacy of the Sinha family has been successfully challenged in the past by local Thakur leader Ram Naresh Singh aka Lootan Singh.

Lootan Singh8217;s son, Sushil Kumar Singh, is the JDU candidate here and is confident of winning on the strength of his popularity among Aurangabad voters. His brother points out Nikhil Kumar is part of the Delhi 8216;8216;social elite8217;8217; who refuses to drink local water and avoids power-less Aurangabad for the AC rooms in Bodh Gaya.

It8217;s a charge one hears often in the streets of the straggling Aurangabad town, and is a major campaign plank of the CPIM-L candidate, Raja Ram, who is seeking to break the 8216;8216;feudal domination8217;8217; of Thakurs in the district.

But the anti-Nikhil Kumar campaign isn8217;t cutting much ice with ordinary people because he has the reputation of being clean and honest and approachable. 8216;8216;Bahut imaandar aadmi hain8217;8217; is the common refrain.

Shyama Sinha, on the other hand, is almost as unpopular as Munilal in Sasaram. The main complaint: 8216;8216;she spends all her time in Delhi and had no time to even hear our complaints.8217;8217;

8216;8216;If she had been given the ticket, we8217;d all have voted for Sushil babu,8217;8217; said Syed Mohammad Aslam, in the midst of a furious chai shop debate on the battle of the Thakurs in Aurangabad.