For Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad, of the 26 seats that his party is contesting in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar, two will be among the most personal of poll battles. That is because two of his daughters, Misa Bharti and Rohini Acharya, are in the fray. And both from tough seats against BJP rivals.
First up is Saran — the constituency, about 75 km from Patna, was known as Chhapra before the 2008 delimitation — in the fifth phase on May 20. Rohini,44, is the RJD candidate here, making her electoral debut from the constituency her father won four times in his career. Then there is Pataliputraonce a part of Patna, where Lalu’s eldest child and Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti,47, will attempt to make her third attempt to win the constituency by defeating her father’s former second-in-command Ram Kripal Yadav of the BJP.
With Misa having the experience of contesting elections and Saran going to polls on Monday, Lalu is spending more time in his former seat at the moment to guide Rohini, who has come to be known in the constituency as the “kidney dene wali beti (daughter who gave a kidney to her father)”. In December 2022, Rohini, who lives in Singapore, donated one of her kidneys to Lalu who had been advised a kidney transplant by doctors for his health problems.
That has struck an emotional chord with the RJD’s vote base. Rohini is also dependent on her brother and Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav’s appeal and her father’s old magic to push her past the finish line in a seat where it essentially boils down to a battle between Rajputs and Yadavs because both communities are of almost equal strength.
Of the estimated 18 lakh voters in Saran, there are approximately 3.5 lakh Yadavs and 3.25 lakh Rajput voters, followed by about two lakh Muslims and 1 lakh Bania and Kushwaha (Other Backward Classes) each. Facing Rohini is sitting BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy who is a four-term parliamentarian. Though Rudy lost to Lalu in 2009, he defeated former Bihar CM Rabri Devi, Lalu’s wife, five years later and retained the seat in 2019.
Over the past fortnight, Lalu Prasad who otherwise avoids campaigning nowadays conducted a few meetings with local RJD workers in Chhapra and Patna to discuss Rohini’s campaign.
“There has to be a change in Saran. Rajiv Pratap Rudy promised to reopen the sugar mills of Chhapra and get farmers to grow sugarcane but the mills never came up. Now that Lalu Prasad’s daughter is contesting, we see a good contest ahead,” said Mohammed Alamgir, a resident of Maker in Saran district.
Campaigning with Tejashwi in Amnour on Thursday, Rohini said, “I want to be the daughter of Saran and have come here to stay and work for people. We have raised the issue of development.”
Tejashwi in his speech recalled how his sister readily gave one of her kidneys to her father. He also stuck to his campaign point of providing jobs to the youth during his tenure in government. “I fulfilled my promise of giving jobs when we were in government. But can PM Modi tell us how many jobs he has given in the last 10 years?” he asked.
But some RJD workers have questioned Rohini’s power to stay the course against Rudy, a seasoned campaigner. The day before, in Maker’s Phulwaria village a few RJD workers were left disappointed when, at the last moment, Rohini cancelled her “jan sampark” events. “Such things create a wrong impression. Campaigning in the last few days is always important,” said an RJD worker, requesting anonymity.
A party worker in Chhapra, who too did not wish to be named, said, “Rohini Acharya who otherwise started off her campaign on a very enthusiastic note seems to have slowed down because of the long campaigning period.”
Rudy who is contesting his 11th election said he was fighting the battle without his close family’s support. “My brother or any other family members are not seeking votes for me. I have served my people for a long time and I am campaigning based on the changes brought under Modi’s regime.”
Will Misa be third-time lucky?
Meanwhile, Misa is attempting to cover as much ground as possible as she attempts to break her party’s jinx in Pataliputra, which was carved out of the Patna Lok Sabha constituency in the 2008 delimitation. While in 2009 Lalu to his former confidant Ranjan Yadav — who returned to the RJD last week — Misa has lost to Ram Kripal Yadav, another Lalu aide who fell out with him, the last two times.
Lalu and Rabri Devi’s eldest child is banking on her brother Tejashwi’s Muslim-Yadav-plus pitch to upset the BJP apple cart. But whether she succeeds will depend on which way the almost evenly-placed social combination swings in the run-up to voting on June 1. Of about 20.5 lakh voters, there are over 4.25 lakh upper castes in the constituency, mainly Kayasthas followed by Bhumihars and Brahmins; 8 lakh OBCs, including 4.25 lakh Yadavs; and almost 3 lakh Scheduled Caste Paswan, Ravidas, and Mushahar voters.
On the campaign trail, Misa has been targeting PM Modi and her BJP rival almost equally, claiming the Modi factor is not visible on the ground. “Where is that factor? He promised two crore jobs. Inflation is high, people continue to migrate in massive numbers … If the INDIA bloc comes to power, we will provide one crore jobs and raise the old-age pension from Rs 400 to Rs 1,000,” she said during a 15-km roadshow in the Danapur Assembly segment.
“I wonder why the NDA that won 39 out of 40 seats in Bihar in 2019 is nervous,” she said, before taking a dig at Ram Kripal. “Why are all NDA MPs hiding behind Modi? It shows that they have performed poorly as MPs.”
As she left the house of a former mukhiya in Mubarakpur after a small break, a local, Captain (retired) R K Sinha, said, “This is her best chance to win against Ram Kripal as he faces double anti-incumbency and the Modi magic has also flattened. Misa has also carefully broad-based her social constituency among non-Yadav OBCs and some sections of the upper castes.
But the sitting MP is not worried. “I do not know what RJD says about me. I might not have done any big work in the constituency but I have a lot of small development work. Narendra Modi has been one overriding factor all across Bihar and the country,” said Ram Kripal Yadav.
