Lalu Prasad has chosen three assembly seats Mahua, Raghopur and Maner, all having Yadav members, for his kids. But Lalu Prasad is finding going tough. Three days back he had gone to Mahua in Hajipur, the bastion of Ram Bilas Paswan, with the mission to introduce his sons to the local people. However he had to face a hostile crowd objecting to it. Yadav had to use his maneouvering skill to pacify party men once it was open that his eldest son Tej Pratap would be contesting from Mahua assembly seat in Vaishali district. In fact while addressing a public meeting in Mahua for the elections to the state legislative council, Tej Pratap had stated that he would enter into the electoral fray from Mahua. The seat is presently being represented by Ravindar Rai a rebel MLA of Janata Dal (United) whose membership of the Bihar Assembly was terminated by the Speaker last year. A division bench of the Patna high court had upheld the ruling of the state assembly Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary. Ravindra Rai had alleged that Mr Yadav and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar have hatched a conspiracy so that he could not contest the assembly election.

Nevertheless it would be difficult for Lalu Prasad to replace the sitting members for the sake of his children. Surprisingly for gaining the confidence and support of the local Yadavs, some RJD leaders also tried to play tricks. The local people were told that local party leader Jageshwar Rai had invited Tej Pratap to contest from Mahua. However, Rai in satirical manner stated, from the podium, “Tej Pratap is son of Lalu Prasad who may choose the candidate according to his wish.” Incidentally, Jageshwar Rai is one of the prominent contenders from Mahua

Apart from Misa Bharti and Tej Pratap, the RJD supremo also introduced Tejashwi, his younger son in the political field as one of his successor. Yadav has openly said that his entire family was part of the RJD and each member played a role in party affairs. If the party sources are to be relied Lalu intends to field Tejasvi from Raghopur Assembly segment of Vaishali district which is a sitting seat of JD(U). The sitting member Satish Kumar, a Yadav, is an intellectual and post graduate in chemistry. He hails from the same Yadav faction which had defeated Rabri Devi in 2010 elections.

Misa Bharti, for nurturing her political ambitions is exerting pressures on her father to field her from Maner assembly seat which is currently being held by one of the RJD heavy weights Bhai Virendra. It is learnt that Lalu Prasad with the intention to project his children in the elections is not entertaining any bio-data or application from the potential candidates so that he can choose the candidates according to his will.

One thing is absolutely clear that Lalu Prasad opting to field his younger son Tejasvi from Raghopur would strain his relations with Nitish Kumar. Since the Raghopur is represented by the JD(U) and Satrish Kumar is a formidable candidate Nitish would certainly cherish the idea of conceding the seat to Lalu.

With the seat sharing process yet to formally begin, Lalu is finding it a tough proposition to announce the names of his children. Nevertheless he would like to use this as the first concerted move to push Nitish to agree to his claims. In fact Lalu is also contemplating to use the ticket distribution as a first step in the direction of consolidating the OBC votes in his favour. Already there is s move to claim stake to the constituencies which have sizeable population of the backwards. However Nitish is not too eager to concede Lalu’s demand.

Precisely with this in view Lalu had come out with the demand to release the survey report having caste input. Criticizing the NDA government for withholding the release of the survey Lalu Prasad alleged that since the BJP was opposed to the Mandal Commission it resorted to this action. With the aim to consolidate backward votes through caste based census report Lalu intends to send the message that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not revealing the caste breakup as his government would have to increase the fund allocation for the schemes for OBC, EBC and SC whose numbers must have increased considerably.

Significantly, Nitish Kumar was not taken into loop before making this demand. Obviously Lalu Prasad was indulging in game of one-upmanship. Interestingly, another leader who demanded the release of the caste based census report is former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. He questioned the stand of the BJP to keep it secret and wrote on his face book wall that the report would reveal the actual status of SC-ST-OBC-EBC and women paving the way for making better policies for the section. (IPA Service)