Lok Sabha elections: Can Rashtriya Janata Dal break the curse of Pataliputra?

Four years ago, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its allies won all six Assembly constituencies within the Pataliputra Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, where the RJD’s Misa Bharti has again challenged the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Ram Kripal Yadav .

She would be hoping for an outcome different from what she and her father, Lalu Prasad, have experienced since the seat was created in 2009, given the influence of the RJD alliance in the Assembly constituencies.

Bharti is currently a Rajya Sabha member. She lost to Ram Kripal, known as ‘Hanuman’ of RJD founder Lalu Prasad, until parting ways with him a decade ago, by narrow margins of almost 4 percent of the votes polled, both in 2014 and 2019. Thank goodness for family since it was formed after the 2008 delimitation. In 2009, Lalu Prasad lost to Ranjan Prasad Yadav of Janata Dal (United), his former confidante, by 23,541 votes.

Ram Kripal was an MP from the Patna Lok Sabha seat in 1993, 1996 and 2004, which was abolished after delimitation, and had a falling out with Lalu Prasad in 2014 when he decided to field his daughter Misa from the newly created Pataliputra seat .

According to locals, Ram Kripal is accessible while Misa is not. However, Ram Kripal’s star in the BJP has waned just as that of Ujiarpur MP Nityanand Rai has risen. Ram Kripal was a Union minister in the first Narendra Modi government but resigned in the second, even as Rai became the Yadav face of the BJP in 2019. Tejashwi Yadav, on the other hand, has energized the RJD’s support base and his plan to guarantee government jobs has struck a chord among the youth.

First print: May 28, 2024 | 12:15 pm IST