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The Lotus blooms in Hazaribagh

Soroor Ahmed in Hazaribagh

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha of the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be placed comfortably in Hazaribagh, a small mining town in south Bihar, and a confident BJP is waiting to know who finishes second.

"There is no contest here. Vajpayeeji's visit has removed whatever little doubt we had in our mind," declares a BJP supporter.

One reason why the BJP is so confident is that there is no anti-BJP alliance worth its name in Hazaribagh. Four non-BJP parties have fielded their candidates and all of them are likely to eat into each other's votes in a grim battle to finish second. Apart from these four, there are nine other candidates in the fray.

Apart from Sinha, the other candidates in the fray are Bihar's minister of institutional finance, Aklu Ram Mahto of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Ramendra Kumar of the Communist Party of India, Ishwari Paswan of the Congress and Tek Lal Mahto of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.

Individually, each one of them has the ability to corner a sizeable number of votes. For instance, Aklu Ram Mahto, being a Koeri, has a ready bank of over 200,000 Koeri votes, while Ramendra Kumar commands a good following in the coal belt. However, ranged against each other they will eat into each other votes. The same is true about the other non-BJP candidates.

Unlike in north and central Bihar, the Yadavs of Hazaribagh and several south Bihar constituencies are not necessarily with Laloo Prasad Yadav's RJD and have been traditional BJP voters.

The BJP camp was a bit jittery initially as there was discontent against Sinha's performance as finance minister. However, through sustained campaigning, the party has been able to convince the electorate that it would be unfair to expect a finance minister to deliver in just 13 months.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in his campaign speeches in Bihar, played the Kargil and Vananchal card. "The RJD is opposing a separate Vananchal state. We are for it," he reiterated both in Hazaribagh and Ranchi. Sinha ended his speech with 'Jai Vananchal.'

The BJP may be critical of the Rabri Devi government for opposing Vananchal, but the RJD has intelligently fielded a trade unionist, Aklu Ram Mahto, who not only belongs to the region, but also resigned from the state cabinet last year in protest against the Bihar's assembly resolution opposing the separate state. It is another thing that Chief Minister Rabri Devi refused to accept his resignation and Laloo Yadav ultimately managed to win him over.

EARLIER REPORT:
Rustic rivals give Yashwant Sinha a run for his money

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