“Your vote for me will help my brother, Tejashwi Yadav, become the chief minister,” Sanjeev Kumar Singh, the Congress party’s candidate in the Vaishali Assembly constituency, told an audience of about 50 people, most of them Yadavs, in Bedaulia village.
At more than 14% of the population, Yadavs make up the single-largest caste group in Bihar. Members of this backward-class community are typically seen as core supporters of the Tejashwi Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal. To invoke Tejashwi while addressing Yadavs is, therefore, nothing out of the ordinary for a Congress candidate, given the decades-old alliance between the grand old party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
But Singh’s appeal carries a different meaning in Vaishali because there is no alliance here – the Rashtriya Janata Dal has fielded its own candidate in the constituency. Singh had contested from this seat in the 2020 Bihar election, too, and lost narrowly to Siddharth Patel of the Janata Dal (United). His supporters say that he has worked hard for the last five years to trounce Patel this time. However, Singh could lose again if the Opposition vote splits and the constituency’s Yadavs opt for the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
Vaishali is one of the 12 seats in Bihar where various members of the Mahagathbandhan, the seven-party Opposition alliance, are pitted against each other. Such infighting had not occurred in 2020, when the Mahagathbandhan came close to defeating the ruling National Democratic Alliance. In Bihar, the alliance chiefly comprises the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (United).
To downplay the impact of these clashes, Opposition leaders have come up with a euphemism: “friendly fights”. But in Vaishali, Scroll found that these fights are far from friendly. On the ground, these contests have deflated the morale of party workers. What is even more damaging is that they have caused confusion among Opposition supporters and put off fence-sitters who could have potentially voted for the Mahagathbandhan.
The ‘friendly fight’ tamasha
As Singh went from village to village in Vaishali on Saturday, he took great pains to explain to voters that he was the Mahagathbandhan’s asli umeedwaar, its actual candidate. “The man who has got the RJD symbol has the Bharatiya Janata Party’s DNA in him,” he claimed at the public meeting in Bedaulia. “After the election, he will join the BJP.”
Sitting on the steps of a house nearby, a group of Yadav women listening to Singh looked unconvinced. Most of them told Scroll that they would decide who to vote for closer to November 6, the voting day in Vaishali, after consulting their family members and community leaders.
“I have always voted for Lalu Yadav [former chief minister of Bihar and Tejashwi’s father] even though he does not win,” admitted 60-year-old Urmila Devi. She was referring to the fact that the Rashtriya Janata Dal has not had its own chief minister in the state since 2005.
Singh himself bemoaned the “avoidable” situation. “I hope that Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav will talk to each other and find a solution,” he said. “Otherwise, the consequences will be very bad.”
Ajay Kumar Kushwaha, the Rashtriya Janata Dal candidate from Vaishali, declined interview requests.
Camped in a temporary office at an under-construction hotel by the highway, Singh’s supporters and Congress party workers appeared crestfallen. Pranav Prakash, 30, called the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s decision to put up its own candidate from Vaishali a “grave betrayal”. Anil Kumar, another young volunteer, worried there could be “violence” between workers of the two parties.
Taufeeq Raza, who travelled 90 kilometres from Aurai, Muzaffarpur, to come and help Singh’s campaign in Vaishali, was blunt. “If we were powerful, we would have made the RJD candidate withdraw,” he said. “RJD has so much power that they forced out our candidate in Lalganj.”
Like Vaishali, neighbouring Lalganj is another assembly constituency that the Congress party had contested in 2020. This time, however, the Rashtriya Janata Dal announced that Shivani Shukla, the daughter of strongman-politician Vijay Kumar Shukla alias Munna Shukla, would be its candidate from the seat.
Aditya Kumar Raja, the Congress nominee, eventually withdrew his candidature in the name of Opposition unity. But when Scroll contacted him, he complained about the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
“God will punish those who are arrogant,” he added. “This is a great injustice that has been done to the extremely backward classes. My people have been insulted.”
Raja belongs to the Kanu caste. Kanus are about 2% of Bihar’s population and find mention in the state’s list of extremely backward classes.
Raja claimed that he was the only person from his community who got a Congress ticket only to be ultimately denied the chance to contest. Many Congress workers see what happened with him as their party’s surrender to the strong-arm tactics of the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
Their grievances stem from the fact that the Congress had contested 70 out of Bihar’s 243 seats in the last election but is only contesting 61 this time. Despite contesting nine seats fewer than it did in 2020, the party finds itself in an awkward spot: its allies have put up candidates against it in as many as 10 seats.
This has prompted many Congress workers like Raza to say that the Congress should have contested the Bihar election on its own. “We are already fighting against each other in 12 seats,” he said. “We might as well have done it in more places.”
‘This is politics’
“If they [Congress] had gone alone, they would have learned what their aukaat [status] is,” said Raj Kumar Rai, a Rashtriya Janata Dal leader from Mallikpur village in Raghopur, Tejashwi Yadav’s own constituency.
Rashtriya Janata Dal full-timers like Rai blame the Congress for the Mahagathbandhan’s failure to form the government in Bihar last time. The grand old party managed to win only 19 out of the 70 seats that it had contested in 2020. In Rai’s view, the Congress deserved to contest not more than 30-40 seats this time. He also blamed the party for delaying the seat-sharing talks.
“The Congress appointed a newbie in charge here,” he complained, alluding to the consultant-turned-politician Krishna Allavaru. “Later, they sent Ashok Gehlot [former chief minister of Rajasthan] who recognised the popularity of the RJD. That is why he immediately declared Tejashwi Yadav as the chief minister face of the alliance.”
On October 23, representatives of all seven Mahagathbandhan parties addressed a press conference in Patna, announcing that Tejashwi Yadav would be the chief minister if they form the next government in Bihar.
Since then, the alliance has managed to avert some of these so-called friendly fights. In three places, the Congress candidates withdrew their papers while in one constituency, the Vikassheel Insaan Party nominee backed off. But in at least 12 seats, alliance partners are still actively campaigning against one another.
“This is not a perfect science, this is politics,” explained Anshul Avijit, a national spokesperson of the Congress party. “It doesn’t mean that the Mahagathbandhan is under any stress. Its togetherness was proved in the Voter Adhikar Yatra.”
The mid-August yatra was part of the Congress campaign against the BJP’s alleged electoral malpractices. In a show of unity, nearly all members of the Mahagathbandhan had participated in it.
However, soon after the yatra began, there was talk about Tejashwi Yadav getting dwarfed by Rahul Gandhi in the public eye. To make matters worse, during the yatra Gandhi repeatedly dodged reporters’ questions about making Yadav the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance. Notably, days after its conclusion, Yadav went on his own yatra in the state.
This apparent display of one-upmanship and the two parties’ squabbles over seat-sharing has opened them to attacks from their opponents. BJP leader Samrat Choudhary went so far as to allege that the Rashtriya Janata Dal had forced its allies’ hand in negotiations.
Rashtriya Janata Dal national spokesperson Jayant Jigyasu rejected the charge that his party had strong-armed its allies. “We put a lot of thought into ticket distribution this time,” he said. “That is why the delay and the friendly fights in some places. But we did not force anything on anybody. All talks took place in an amicable atmosphere.”
Ram Naresh Pandey, Bihar secretary of the Communist Party of India, a member of the Mahagatbandhan, squarely blamed the Congress for the confusion. The Communist Party of India is clashing with the Congress party in four constituencies and the Rashtriya Janata Dal is doing so in five.
“The RJD has only put up candidates in seats where it can win,” he argued. “From the beginning till now, only the Congress is to be held responsible for all the problems in this alliance.”
Miffed voters
The infighting has affected how voters view the Opposition. In Vaishali, Scroll met people who were disappointed by the Mahagathbandhan’s inability to field a common candidate.
Sunil Kumar, 35, is a resident of Dhane Goraul village and an aspirant for a state government job. He belongs to the Chaurasia caste, which is recognised as an extremely backward class in Bihar. He grew up attending Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh meetings and supported the BJP till 2015.
However, now he considers himself an Opposition voter and criticises the Modi government for outsourcing government jobs to the private sector. When Sanjeev Kumar Singh, the Congress candidate in Vaishali, visited his village, Kumar watched the show from the periphery.
“All this is confusing voters,” he said. “People here are fed up with the JD(U) MLA. But they are confused by the two options before them, the Congress and the RJD. This is happening in several seats across the state. These seats matter a lot because Tejashwi missed out on forming the government by just a handful of seats last time.”
Once the Congress leader and his cavalcade of vehicles had left the village, others opened up as well.
“The Mahagathbandhan needs to get its house in order,” said one middle-aged voter who requested anonymity citing his government job. “Nobody is happy with the JD(U) MLA. But I look at the top leaders and vote for the NDA because the signs from the Mahagathbandhan are not good.”
In the neighbouring village of Bahadurpur, Muslim residents also complained about the state of affairs. Shahbaz Alam, 23, is a civil engineer by training and works as a freelance political consultant with Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United) leaders across Bihar. He liked working on Rashtriya Janata Dal assignments, he said, because he used to consider himself a supporter of the party till recently.
“I don’t feel like voting for them anymore, though,” he added. “Nobody is able to digest the khichdi that they have prepared this time.”
You’ve read Scroll.
Now help sustain it
Scroll is funded by readers, not corporate owners. If you believe our work matters, support our newsroom. Become a member today!
We’re not driven by clicks or corporate interests – just honest, independent reporting. Keep us going. Support Scroll today!