Why Kabirpur decided not to vote this time

Did he say it?

Rao visited the area on October 24. When Express reached there a week later, rumours and reality had blended.

But one man stood up to be counted. Mohammad Yahya Ali, 40, did not have any doubts. He said he had heard Rao. ‘‘K. J. Rao came here and asked the name of the locality. When he was told ‘Kabirpur’, he commented ‘this seems to be Pakistan,’’’ said Ali.

Others have just heard about the statement.

Apart from Ali, Mateen Khan, a government-employed pump operator, was an eyewitness. The building that houses the pump is polling booth number 46. Mateen stays there with his family and vacates two rooms during elections.

On October 24, Rao reached here on a complaint that voters were being threatened. Eyewitnesses said he stayed for a few minutes. Apart from an elderly voter, he talked only to Mateen. ‘‘My cot was outside and I was standing when Rao reached here. He asked me whether this was a polling booth. When I said yes, he asked me to remove the cot and I obeyed,’’ declared Mateen. Asked about the controversial comment, which the Congress-RJD has made a poll issue, he said that he had not heard it.

But other residents of Kabirpur claimed that more person than one had heard the P-word. ‘‘But now they are scared,’’ declared Harun Alam.

But the anger was visible. ‘‘During the Bhagalpur riots in 1989, the police had searched our locality and found nothing objectionable. No incidence of booth-capturing or violence has ever taken place here. So why did Rao come here, pass a comment and fill our booths with Central forces? It was like insulting us, just because we belong to a minority community,’’ said Zulfiqar Khan, a retired government employee.

They also said that when they boycotted the polls and alleged on TV that Rao made the remarks, a posse of policemen arrived and ‘‘threatened them with dire consequences.’’

The local police, however, denied it.

The Bhagalpur DM refused to comment and the SP was not available—both had accompanied Rao to the spot. Rao too refused to comment. He said the Election Commission was scheduled to issue a clarification. In fact, Rao’s alleged remark is not the first on the list of Kabirpur’s complaints.

• In 2003, two booths of their locality were shifted to an adjacent Hindu-dominated area. They are demanding the booths be brought back.

• The booths in Kabirpur were made to appear ‘‘super-sensitive’’ though the area had no past record of violence or booth-capturing.

• The third, and the most important one, is there has been no development.

Kabirpur falls under the Bhagalpur assembly segment which the BJP has been representing for the last 15 years. Certain that the voters here never voted him, the MLA, said the residents, never bothered about the locality. ‘‘It seems we are unwanted. After the boycott, nobody has come here to talk to us. Is this democracy?’’ said Hasnain Alam.

Day after: JDU-CPI(ML) turns attack on RJD combine

Patna: The CPI-ml (Liberation) slammed the RJD-Congress on Thursday for attacking the Election Commission. It asked both the parties to do some introspection on its credibility due to continuance of people like Jaiprakash Narain Yadav, against whom a non- bailable arrest warrant was pending, in the Union government.

“Instead of questioning the credibility of the Election Commission, the RJD-Congress combine should do some introspection. There is a question mark on their own credibility due to continuance of people like J N Yadav and P N Yadav in the government,” CPI-ml general secretary Dipanker Bhattacharya said.

Senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav joined the attack, saying the party, with a century-old history, was busy attacking an esteemed constitutional body like the Election Commission under the “corrupt influence” of its partner RJD. Complimenting Rao for conducting polls in a “peaceful and fair” manner, he said the RJD and Congress were attacking the EC probably because it had stopped their “poll malpractices.”