It will be interesting to see whether the issue of SIR in Bihar is effective in elections or issues like employment, inflation, migration. These elections are also going to be a hallmark of generational changes in the leadership.
Recently, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was on ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar. The journey started from Sasaram on 17 August ended on 1 September from a meeting at Gandhi Maidan in Patna. All the parties of India block including RJD were with him in this visit. Rahul alleges that just before the Bihar assembly elections, there is rigging in the name of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter list of the Election Commission, so that the ruling NDA can be benefited in the election to be held in October-November. The Election Commission has rejected Rahul’s allegations.
The Election Commission published a draft voter list in Bihar on 1 August and gave a month to re -include the people whose names have been missed. After handling all the claims and complaints, the Commission is going to publish the final voter list on September 30, on the basis of which assembly elections will be held this time. In the first list, the name of cutting the names of about 65 lakh voters was revealed. Certainly it will be interesting to see if Rahul and other leaders of his coalition will be satisfied with the new voter list? If they see flaws in that list too, then they will try to make it a big issue in the state elections. But, will this issue be as big as Rahul and Tejashwi Yadav, the leading partner of his coalition, expect?
In fact, this entire campaign has taken the form of a fight for the Grand Alliance vs Election Commission, due to which other issues against the Nitish Kumar government have become secondary. Cases such as migration of people, migration of people in search of livelihood, education and health sector flaws and corruption against government personnel have been lost. Can the issue of alleged disturbances in the voter list affect the general voter as much as the issues that are related to their everyday life. This does not mean that if there are really flaws in the voter list in democracy, then they should be ignored, but how effective it would be to make the entire strategy around it for the opposition.
In this context, the policy of newly formed Jan Suraj Party convenor Prashant Kishore seems more clear. Kishore has been preparing for this election for the last two years. Meanwhile, he has taken a padyatra of the entire Bihar. Along with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, BJP, RJD and Congress also live in every rally. According to him, no party has worked for the betterment of Bihar in the last thirty-forty years. Therefore, they are taking a new option among the public. Perhaps the biggest reason for his well-planned strategy is that Bihar’s politics is a fragrance of change after this election, especially in the case of leadership. Kishore believes that Nitish era will be interrupted after this election. Lalu Prasad, the contemporary of Nitish’s contemporary and Bihar’s politics, is not active as before health reasons.
Two major contemporary of these two leaders- Ram Vilas Paswan, the founder of the Lok Janshakti Party and Sushil Kumar Modi of BJP have died. Therefore, after the election, this time there are strong possibilities of new generation leaders emerging, whether NDA or Grand Alliance. In the last election, the new generation of stunning came close to victory, while Chirag Paswan succeeded in making a mark with his political legacy. This time, even if the BJP and JDU are successful in retaining the reins of power, it is still an assessment of its leadership being in the hands of a new face. Perhaps this is the reason that Prashant Kishore has taken this election as an opportunity to emerge new leadership in Bihar. His fight is on issues beyond the decision of the Election Commission, which Bihar has been struggling for years. The Congress seems to be the weakest link from this perspective because it has no major face to fill the emptiness under the leadership of Bihar.
For the Congress too, this election could have been to emerge as a better alternative in the state, provided it would have paid attention to the new generation leaders at the local level, but the best option for the Congress still seems to be that he contested in Bihar under the leadership of Tejashwi of RJD. In fact, a big fight for Rahul is to be fought at the national level, so at present, SIR is a bigger issue for him, on the basis of which they are trying to surround the BJP, but how effective it will be in Bihar elections, it will be a matter to be seen.
