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Third Front Ahead of Bihar Polls: Prospects and
Problems
September 19, 2015
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The formation of the Third Front in
Bihar is, at best, a grouping of dissidents who have rallied together to form
this front. With Mulayam Singh taking the lead in the formation of the front
only a few days before the first leg of polling in the state, the grouping can
only be expected to thrive on vote division and individual influence rather
than organised and meticulous planning.
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As it is, Mulayam has no base in
Bihar and the best that his Samajwadi Party had achieved in Bihar was when it
had bagged four seats out of the 165 it had contested in February 2005.
Its tally, though, was reduced to just two within eight months when elections
were again held in October. The SP had then contested 158 of the 243 seats in
the state. It is noteworthy that in 2010 it could not win a single assembly
seat in Bihar!
What is ironical is that the same
grand alliance or mahagathbandhan (comprising SP, JD(U), Rashtriya Janata Dal,
Congress, Nationalist Congress Party) that he was heading, refused to allocate
even a single seat to his own SP that forced him to quit the alliance, only a
few days before the poll dates were announced in the state. What was even more
bizarre was the way the RJD supremo Lalu Yadav offered two seats from RJD’s
quota of 100 seats and three Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) seats (after the
latter withdrew from the alliance) to Mulayam only out of family considerations
since he is also related to Lalu. Subsequently, SP had termed it a
“conspiracy”. To quote his words, “Had we joined them we would have not only
lost our symbol but also the party.”
Besides SP, the only other big name
in the “third front” is the Nationalist Congress Party. It has contested
elections in Bihar in the past but without much success. One of its founders,
Tariq Anwar, belongs to the state and is a Member of Parliament from Katihar in
North Bihar. But that’s all. Like the SP, it was unable to open its account in
the last assembly elections in the state. In fact, it was the first to quit the
grand alliance over seat distribution.
Interestingly, the third front has
brought together the NCP and the National People’s Party – founded by PA Sangma
who was expelled from the NCP in 2012. What is significant is that the NPP is
an absolutely new entrant to the Bihar elections.
However, the same cannot be said
about the Samajwadi Janata Dal (Democratic), the fourth constituent of the
third front. Its leader Devendra Prasad Yadav is a veteran. Earlier, he was
with the JD(U) and was a former Union Minister in the NDA government under Atal
Behari Vajpayee at the turn of the millennium. In 2004, he had left the
JD(U) to join the then arch-rival, the RJD. However, he had even left the RJD
in 2010 to launch his new party, the SJD(D). Since 2009, Yadav himself has lost
the Lok Sabha elections.
Personality
Cult within the Third Front
This brings us to the issue of
personality cult within the third front. Given the past record, Mulayam’s name
alone cannot translate into votes in Bihar. Much interest has been generated
over veteran political heavyweight and prominent Brahmin face of the RJD,
Raghunath Jha, joining the SP on poll eve on grounds that he was not getting
“due respect” from Lalu. Jha was a union minister of state in the erstwhile UPA
government. In his long political career, where he started as a socialist
leader in the 1960s, he has frequently changed political alliances – from
Socialist Party to the Congress, Janata Party, Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United)
and then to the RJD before he finally joined SP. His political journey has been
long and arduous. In 1990, he was even pitted as chief ministerial candidate
against Lalu Prasad and former chief minister Ramsunder Das in a triangular
contest that he had lost. The question, though, is about his political
relevance now and whether he can get the upper caste votes for the third front
that can be termed as a conglomeration of the disgruntled OBCs (read
predominantly Yadavs) from the RJD. The upper caste in Bihar are known
supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party as is reflected by the successive
assembly poll results in recent times as well as the Lok Sabha elections of
2014. Besides, Jha himself had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Yet another upper caste leader,
Munna Singh, who was a JD(U) MLC, too, has joined the SP on poll eve. But whether
he succeeds in fetching votes for the front is to be seen.
Ostensibly, the third front is
largely being conceived to split the “secular” votes. This poses a challenge
before the JD(U)-RJD-Congress, particularly at a time when Asaduddin Owaisi’s
All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), too, has made its maiden entry
into the fray and is expected to win away a significant Muslim votes from their
fold.
In the wake of these formulations,
the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance now alleges that like the AIMIM, even Mulayam
is helping the BJP in Bihar by splitting votes. To this allegations, SP leader
Ram Gopal Yadav commented: “In politics, such charges are made”.
Alienation
of Jan Adhikar Party Loktantrik
What is interesting, though, is that
both the NDA as well as the third front have ignored Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu
Yadav’s political outfit Jan Adhikar Party Loktantrik. Yadav was expelled from
the RJD and was expected to join the NDA. He is a five-term MP and a political
heavyweight in Seemanchal from where AIMIM is contesting 24 seats. His
chequered past seems to have gone against his inclusion in the NDA (although he
was last year acquitted in the murder of a CPI-M leader). However, his presence
will only further split the OBC and Muslim votes in the state though he is yet
to take a call on contesting the polls.
While not much is expected of the
Third Front in Bihar except for splitting the Yadav and Muslim votes in the
state, what gives it an interesting dimension is that a third front sans the
Left parties does suggest the growing irrelevance of the Left in mainstream
politics of the Hindi heartland. No doubts on this at least!
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