Patna,
More than Narendra Modi’s appeal, the BJP seems to be banking on the caste
arithmetic when the last lot of six Lok Sabha seats in Bihar go to the polls
Monday.
The
Bharatiya Janata Party had won two of the six constituencies in 2009 in
alliance with the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) which too won from two places.The
Monday balloting will be crucial for the BJP to counter a resurgent Rashtriya
Janata Dal (RJD) of Lalu Prasad and to push Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD-U
to the third spot.The BJP and the JD-U, which ended its 17-year alliance with
the BJP last year, are contesting the election without each other’s support for
the first time since 1996.Of the six constituencies, the RJD won only in
Vaishali, thanks to the appeal of its candidate Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.
A
total of 90 candidates, including five women, are in the electoral fray Monday.
Polling will be held in 8,582 polling stations. More than nine million
electorate is eligible to vote.Addressing meetings in all six constituencies,
BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi sought to emphasize that he
came from an extremely backward caste.He also repeatedly targeted Congress
leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and Congress campaigner Priyanka Gandhi
for their remarks blaming him for “neech politics” remarks.Modi’s caste card is
widely as an attempt to woo Bihar’s backward castes, Dalit and Mahadalits.
The
BJP is confident of support from the upper castes – Brahmins, Bhumihar and
Rajputs – and also hopes to garner support of backward castes and Dalits,
thanks to its alliance with the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) of Ram Vilas Paswan
and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) of Upendra Kushwaha.But with the
Congress joining hands with the RJD and with Lalu Prasad claiming that his
traditional Yadav-Muslim support base was in place, this election will be a
major challenge to the BJP.
JD-U
leaders are confident of doing better than last time in the final round of
polling.The party is banking on Nitish Kumar’s development card and his “social
engineering” of extreme backward castes, Mahadalits and Muslims, spokesman
Neeraj Kumar said.Prominent leaders in the fray Monday are former union minister
Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Raghunath Jha, filmmaker Prakash Jha, Rama Singh,
Satish Dubey Hina Sahab, wife of tainted and jailed former MP Mohammad
Shahabuddin, Annu Shukhla, wife of jailed former legislator Munna Shukhla.In
West Champaran, Prakash Jha is trying his luck for the third time. Pitted
against him is outgoing MP Sanjay Jaiswal of the BJP and Raghunath Jha of the
RJD.In Siwan, Hina Sahab (RJD) is contesting against BJP’s 2009 winner Om
Prakash Yadav.
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