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Bihar Congress looks a gift horse in the mouth

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

The Congress in Bihar wants to team up with the Rashtriya Janata Dal during the elections but they also realise that their social base has been eroded by their overtures to the RJD.

They are strong in pockets of Jharkhand but assert the party is a force to reckon with. And the same Congressmen who resisted the central leadership's decision to bail out the Rabri government last February are now demand that since they extended "timely help to the government of Laloo Yadav's wife" they ought to get something in return.

They know that the latest seat agreement had the nod from Sonia Gandhi, yet they singled out Pranab Mukherjee. He was manhandled in Delhi by some state Congressmen on Wednesday.

When the RJD left 13 seats for them to contest -- compared to the eight in 1998 -- there was still an uproar. According to one of the vice presidents of the state unit Narendra Kumar: "We are a much stronger party now that the minority and dalits have returned to our fold." Some Congressmen here, among them those likely to get ticket, are more than satisfied with the arrangement but won't say it aloud for fear of antagonising the others.

The situation in the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee headquarters is not much different from the one in February when the Congress Working Committee decided to vote against the imposition of President's rule in Bihar. In the words of Aendra Singh, one BPCC secretary, "Eightyfive per cent of the office-bearer are against this abject surrender before Laloo Yadav in the name of secularism."

As in last February, most top state leaders have rushed to Delhi to influence the central leadership, but are again likely to return dejected.

Those mature elements who aren't complaining to Delhi still skirt the real question.

"No, the last word has not been spoken on the the seat adjustment. Even Laloo Yadav has not made any such announcement. I watched Laloo Yadav on television last night and he had not said anything like that. So it is too early to react," said former BPCC chief Lahtan Chaudhary.

He confirmed that the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee had demanded 50 per cent of the seats, that is, 27 seats. "We expect at least 20 seats. Now it is up to the central leadership to decide," he told rediff.com.

There is near unanimity among political observers that the party got far more than it deserved. Though the final list has not yet been disclosed, the Congress is likely to get seven out of 14 seats in the Jharkhand belt. They are Giridih, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Khunti, Raj Mahal, Lohardagga and Singhbhum. The party won at Lohardagga and Singhbhum in 1998, and lost by just nine votes in Raj Mahal. In North Bihar they are likely to bag Maharajganj, Katihar, Madhubani and Begusarai.

The party won from the last three seats while it has put up Mahachandra Prasad Singh, a Bhumihar, again from Maharajganj. Singh lost to the Samata Party's Prabhunath Singh, a Rajput, by 2,05,343 votes last time.

Similarly in central Bihar it is likely to win in Aurangabad, from where it has put up Shyama Singh, the daughter-in-law of former chief minister, Satyendra Singh (a Rajput), and wife of IPS officer Nikhil Kumar.

The thirteenth seat is not yet finalised, and it isn't certain whether the Congress will get Araria or Bagha, both constituencies reserved for the scheduled castes in north Bihar.

Party insiders confirm that the personal animosity is also becoming visible. For example, state party chief Sadananad Singh, a Kurmi, was looking forward to fight from Bhagalpur. Similarly, another strongman from north Bihar, Raghunath Pandey, a Bhumihar, hoped to join battle in Muzaffarpur. The party also wanted to contest the Buxar seat, which the RJD left to the Communist Party of India.

Fully aware that the OBC and Dalit votes are still not with them, the Congress wanted to cash in on the resentment the Bhumihars had for the BJP-Samata combine.

In the Bhumihar Mahasammelan held in the state capital on August 1, the rift came to the fore with both the supporters of Congress and the BJP-Samata exchanging blows on the dais. Though Bhumihars, a landed upper caste, have supported the BJP-Samata combine in the last two elections many speakers expressed their anger against the combine for taking caste votes for granted.

It is not for nothing that two of the five non-reserved seats that the Congress is contesting in north and central Bihar have been allotted to Bhumihars.

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