© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
MANOJ BHARATI, the working president of the newly launched Jan Suraaj Party in Bihar, first got associated with Prashant Kishor when the latter launched his padyatra from Bhitiharwa in West Champaran on October 2, 2022. The retired Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer says he had no idea till a month ago that Kishor, the political analyst-turned-politician, would zero in on him for the post, from among the many ex-IPS officers, doctors, advocates and IITians in its ranks.
Announcing Bharati as the working president on Wednesday, Kishor said Jan Suraaj would hold its organisational elections in March 2025, and till then Bharati would be the party’s working president. He would be made full-fledged president if duly elected, Kishor said.
If Bharati, who belongs to Madhubani, is picked, as expected, he would be the key face of Jan Suraaj when it makes its electoral debut with the Bihar Assembly elections of October-November 2025.
More than the fact that Bharati is a Scheduled Caste, his accomplishments influenced the decision to pick him as working president, Kishor said. “I tried to get enrolled in Netarhat twice, but could not succeed. Here is Manoj Bharati, who studied at Netarhat, Ranchi,” Kishor said, in a reference to Netarhat’s reputed boarding school. He went on to mention Bharati’s career graph since, including B.Tech from IIT-Kanpur and Masters from IIT-Delhi, before becoming an IFS officer.
As a bureaucrat, Bharati served as Secretary (Administration) in the Ministry of External Affairs, and was India’s envoy to Belarus, Indonesia, Ukraine and Timor Leste.
In his speech, Bharati thanked Kishor for naming him the first occupant of the post and said he decided to join politics impressed by “the clarity of Kishor’s vision”. He never lost touch with his roots in Bihar, even when on foreign assignment, he said. “Whether it was gifting Mithila paintings or Bhagalpuri silk shawls to guests, it was all about showcasing Bihar.”
In an interview to The Indian Express, Bharati added: “There is a ‘cooling-off’ period of one year after retirement, after which I was looking for options. I was interested in doing some work in the field of education and training of youths, and politics was never on the radar. But I always had this social awareness and desire to give back to society.”
Bharati credited some of this to his late father-in-law and former Bihar DGP Maiku Ram, who also made a name in politics. “Even now people all over Bihar remember him. Then I met PK (Kishor). He convinced me that the usual notion of money, muscle and ancestry is not relevant in his way of doing politics. That is when I decided to work with him.”
Recalling fondly his trips back home to the family village to meet his cousins, Bharati said these showed him that the two things that need “immediate attention” are education and employment. “Though these are just two words, they are connected to many aspects of governance.”
In his speech after being named working president, Bharati named finding a solution to recurrent floods in Bihar as another of Jan Suraaj’s goals. “We are in touch with experts to ensure that rivers remain friends and do not turn into enemies… Our common goal is to make Bihar one of the top 10 states of the country.”
Kishor earlier said that his party would ensure proportional representation to all social groups, and that its president, whose term would last a year, would be an SC to start with, followed by an EBC or a Muslim, and then OBC and a general category candidate.
Bharati told The Indian Express that this was a big thing. “PK speaks of the need for equal status and opportunities to various sections of society. He has declared special programmes for women, old citizens, farmers. His talk of proportional representation for Dalits, backward classes, Muslims and other higher castes has been accepted as a fundamental principle of Jan Suraaj by the masses and people in the party.”
