Bihar: After Bypoll Setback, RJD Asks its MLAs to Camp in Constituencies, Reach Out to People

Patna: After a setback in the recently concluded Assembly bypolls in Bihar, the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is gearing up
to take on the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in next year’s Assembly polls. Sensing the political challenge, RJD leader
Tejashwi Yadav has urged party leaders and workers to become fully active on the ground to reach out to people, listen and interact with them.

Taking it further, Tejashwi, who is also Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, has asked all party MLAs to camp in their respective constituencies, meet people to know their grievances and take action accordingly.  He urged them to start work at the booth level, “hum log tabhi behtar kar payenge, jab janata ke beech rahenge” (we can do better only if we remain among the people), he said.

The RJD leader made it clear to party MLAs that common people should be focus of the party. “Go to your constituencies after end of ongoing five-day-long winter session of the Assembly, spend time on
the ground, meet people and try to connect people with RJD. Staying in Patna will not work or help the party”, he added.

Tejashwi is set to launch the next phase of Karyakarta Darshan Yatra in December 2024. He had launched second phase of this Yatra in October this year but ended it halfway following the declaration of Assembly bypolls.

A senior RJD leader said during the Yatra, Tejashwi will “galvanise party workers for the political battle next year and will give tips to them on how to use various issues to expose the NDA government led by Nitish Kumar”.

In recent months, the surge in Bihar’s crime graph has provided Tejashwi Yadav a readymade issue to use against the NDA government’s failure to maintain law and order. He has been regularly issuing a crime bulletin -- list of serious crime incidents – to counter Nitish-Modi's old ‘jungle raj’ campaign against RJD’s 15-year rule. The crime bulletins on his social media has details, such as the  nature of crime, name of victims and place of crime and date.

During the election campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in May, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi never missed a chance to use the term ‘jungle raj’ to attack RJD, warning people not to support and vote for the party.

Among the incidents of increasing lawlessness in the past few months, there were reports of a murderous attack on police officials by the powerful sand mafia and liquor mafia, over a dozen incidents of murder have been reported in the last fortnight, including cases of rape, kidnapping, extortion, loot of banks, robbery and other crimes.

In the past six months, traders, businessmen, contractors and private company officials have been ‘soft targets’ of criminals in Bihar, as per reports.

Notably, ‘rule of law’ was the main selling point for Nitish Kumar after he came to power in November 2005, criticising his political rival Lalu Prasad, chief of RJD, for “jungle raj” from 1990 to 2005. However, the reality now is that the fear of lawlessness has once again gripped people.

According to RJD leaders here, Tejashwi was shocked over the defeat of RJD and its ally CPI(ML) in the bypolls. The RJD was defeated in Belaganj and Ramgarh and its ally CPI(ML) was defeated in the Tarari seat. Three of four seats were previously held by the Opposition Mahagathbandhan.

Despite defeat in the bypolls, MLAs of RJD, Congress and Left parties are aggressive in the ongoing Assembly session. In past two days, they staged protest and raised the issues of reservation, smart
prepaid meters looting people, failure of prohibition in the state and irregularities in the education department.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA won all four Assembly seats in the bypolls held early this month. The BJP won Tarai and Ramgarh seats, the Janata Dal- United wrested Belaganj from RJD and Hindustan Awam Morcha retained the Imamganj seat.

After the bypoll outcome, the number of NDA MLAs has increased in the Assembly and the Mahagathbandhan’s MLAs’ number has decreased in comparison to what it was after the 2020 Assembly polls, when RJD was the single largest party.

In the 243-member House, BJP is now the single largest party with 80 MLAs and its ally JD-U has 45 MLAs. Its other ally, HAM, has 4 MLAs. While RJD has 77 MLAs, Congress has 19 MLAs, CPI(ML) has 11 MLAs, CPI(M) 2 MLAs and CPI 2 MLAs, while the AIMIM has 1 and there are 2 independent MLAs.