Unimpressed by ‘nationalism’, in seat he won four times, election about Lalu being put in jail

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The RJD has fielded Daroga Rai’s son and former Bihar minister Chandrika Rai, against BJP candidate and former Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy. While Lalu’s elder son Tej Pratap Yadav is married to Chandrika’s daughter, Tej had openly disagreed with the party choice.

Lalu won the seat for the first time in 1977 and last in 2009. In 2013, he lost his Lok Sabha membership following his conviction in a fodder scam case. His wife and former CM Rabri Devi had contested in 2014 against Rudy and lost in the Modi wave.

READ | RJD base intact but Modi message pushes Lalu legacy to margins

While Chandrika is managing his campaign from a relative’s house near the Bela rail factory, wife Poornima Rai has camped herself in the family’s single-storey pucca house in Bajahiya village and is holding small meetings. A weathered portrait of Daroga Rai, who died in 1981, adorns the entrance to the house, while inside, where he would meet people, a low-height single bedstead used by the former CM is kept for memory.

Police Rai (70), who used to be one of Daroga Rai’s close associates — sharing with him more than their names, meant to make them sound “powerful” — says the latter had been happy with a teacher’s job, and politics came suddenly. “At a school function, senior Congress leader Jagjivan Ram asked Rai to speak and was so impressed, he took him into politics,” says Police.

Recalling his connect with the people, Police says Daroga Rai would walk 7-8 km every morning to meet people. Of his five sons and two daughters, only Chandrika, the second, took to politics.

The village remembers how as CM, Daroga Rai raised an embankment to prevent recurrent flooding of the village from the Gandak waters. The village’s two schools, primary and secondary, both opened in the 1960s.

However, the village had to wait until 2016, for the Mahagathbandhan government of the JD(U)-RJD-Congress, in which Chandrika became a minister, to get a metalled road.

At some distance from Daroga Rai’s house, Dharmnath Rai, who participated in the 1971 Indo-Pak war and retired as subedar major in 1991, says, “I am amused at all this talk about nationalism. I remember returning to my village in 1972, after Bangladesh had been carved out. Villagers did flock around to know how we out-smarted the Pakistan army, but it still did not become an election issue.” Around 50 people from the village serve in the defence forces, Dharmnath adds, who all take pride in their job.

A CRPF jawan, home on vacation, talks about facing stone-pelting from protesters “silently” during his posting in Kashmir. “The PM talks of giving us a free run, but that is far from the truth,” he says, requesting anonymity.

The Army is one avenue for village youths, apart from teaching and engineering, though most of the 1,500 homes depend on agriculture and animal husbandry for a living.

Claiming Chandrika has a good chance in a straight fight with the BJP, his neighbour Naik Rai says, “This election is about Lalubandi (the imprisonment of Lalu) and balubandi (government restraint on sand contracts, forcing several Yadav youths out of their jobs).”

A few kilometres away, at Parsa Bazar, next to a shining brass bust of Daroga Rai at a chowk, several Yadavs are discussing at a tea stall how Tejashwi has been getting good crowds. Since 2014, the locals jokingly call the stall owner, Ram Babu Sah, “Modiji”. Sah says he is happy as “I am also a chaiwallah and take pride in my job”.

Predicts Surendra Rai, “Chandrika is winning… He is Lalu’s family now and should win Saran for him.”