Addressing a function held at Sonbarsa in Bihar's Saharsa to commemorate the death anniversary of socialist icon and former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur Monday, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav argued that his father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad should be conferred the Bharat Ratna for giving “voice to the voiceless in an era when the depressed classes were denied access to the wells”. Both the event and the Bharat Ratna pitch for Lalu highlighted the RJD’s bid to woo back the votes it has lost over the years – those of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) and Dalits. Thakur, who belonged to an EBC community, was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously by the Narendra Modi government ahead of the Lok Sabha polls early last year. Having been branded over the years as a “M-Y” or Muslim-Yadav party and failing to cross the majority line in successive elections over the last couple of decades despite increasing its vote share, the RJD has now mounted a massive exercise to woo non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBCs), EBCs and Dalits in a bid to expand its social base. Bihar is slated for the Assembly polls in October-November this year. In the 1990s, the rise of social justice politics and Lalu’s leadership had revolutionised Bihar’s political landscape, pitting the OBCs as a whole against the upper caste hegemony. This had resulted in the OBCs, EBCs and Dalits gravitating towards Lalu, which ensured his continuance at the helm for 15 years. However, Lalu's erstwhile comrade-in-arm in the Janata Parivar, Nitish Kumar, then emerged and went on to wrest power from Lalu in 2005 in alliance with the BJP. JD(U) chief and CM Nitish has since built his formidable vote bank among the EBCs and Mahadalits (extremely backward Dalits) with tailored schemes, successfully preventing the RJD from returning to power so far. The Sonbarsa rally was the second such event attended by Tejashwi, the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, in less than a month. On January 22, Tejashwi addressed a huge rally in Phulparas, Jhanjharpur district, to mark Karpoori Thakur's birth anniversary, where he underlined how he was inspired by Thakur, a pioneer of reservations in Bihar, to push for a hike in quota for the backward and underprivileged when his party was in alliance with Nitish as part of their Mahagathbandhan government. According to Bihar's 2022-23 caste survey, the EBCs are the largest group making up over 36% of the state’s population, while Dalits account for about 20%. The RJD held another rally to reach out to the Teli community in Patna on February 9, which was also addressed by Tejashwi. Telis are the largest community among the EBCs, who account for about 3% of Bihar’s population. Tejashwi has also been on a statewide tour, called the Karyakarta Darshan Sah Samwad Karyakram, during which he is meeting party workers in all the Assembly constituencies besides flagging his party's promises before the people. “During the Karyakarta Samwad, party workers are being told to do a door-to-door campaign to tell the people from EBC and Dalit communities that we are their well-wishers. They have been asked to remind people what all Lalu Prasad ji gave them when he was in power. People are also being reminded of how we increased quota for EBCs when we were in power with Nitish ji,” RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari said. The RJD has been making an outreach to the EBCs for some time. Ahead of the 2020 Assembly polls, the party had given significant representation to EBCs in the organisation. However, this crucial vote base has still not been won over by the party. One of the reasons for it has been their poor representation in the party's ticket distribution in elections, sources said. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the RJD had given only three tickets to the EBC faces, allotting most of its tickets to Yadavs and Kushwahas – the dominant OBC castes in Bihar – as well as Muslims. The RJD however could win just four seats out of 23 it contested, with its ally Congress getting three out of nine seats and their Left partner CPI(ML) Liberation winning two out of three seats. The NDA bagged 30 out of the state's 40 seats. All EBC candidates of the RJD lost the polls. In the July 2024 Assembly bypoll in the EBC-dominated Rupauli seat, the RJD's nominee came third. Also, while in UP, Dalits backed the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) in the Lok Sabha polls amid the INDIA alliance's “saving the Constitution” campaign, such a shift was not seen in Bihar in favour of the Opposition bloc. To offset this, in the upcoming state Assembly elections, the RJD is planning to give more tickets to the EBC candidates and field Dalits from non-reserved seats – a gambit that helped Akhilesh garner the Dalit support. “Lok Sabha polls have fewer seats and so ticket distribution can be tricky in an alliance. But Assembly polls will give us more room and we are going to accommodate more EBCs this time. We have already shown we are their well-wishers by giving them jobs when we were in power. We will accommodate them in every sphere in accordance with their numbers,” said RJD MP Sudhakar Singh, the son of state RJD president Jagadanand Singh. Sudhakar expressed confidence about the RJD's poll prospects, claiming that EBCs were “already shifting” to the party. “The fact that our vote share has been increasing in successive elections shows that EBCs are coming to us. We already have the captive votes of Yadavs, Muslims and a section of Dalits. We just have to add a bit more. The NDA has already put up its best performance in Lok Sabha with the Modi face. Everyone knows in Assembly polls, its vote share drops,” he said. Significantly, in the Lok Sabha polls, the RJD, despite its low tally, emerged as the largest party in terms of vote share (over 22%). With Rahul Gandhi continuing his campaign for the cause of the Constitution and a caste census, the RJD hopes it should be able to counter the “extra votes” Chirag Paswan-led LJP(RV) would bring to the NDA table in the 2025 polls. In 2020, Chirag had gone solo protesting against Nitish and had damaged the JD(U)’s chances, even though the NDA managed to secure a simple majority. The RJD is however not just depending on social engineering this time. Still reeling from its “Lalu jungle raj” burden from the past over allegations of misrule during the Lalu-Rabri regimes, the party is now also going for an image makeover. To send out a signal that the RJD has a vision for Bihar's development, Sudhakar Singh organised an event, “Bihar Policy Dialogue”, in Delhi last week, which was attended by former members of the Finance Commission and the Planning Commission besides academics from the JNU, Delhi University, and some other institutions to deliberate on a growth roadmap for the state. The session concluded that Bihar would need a central assistance of Rs 15 lakh crore to kickstart its economy and pull itself out of poverty.
