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Sharad Yadav is losing love in Bihar

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

Union Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav is fast becoming hugely unpopular in his home state.

Rewind a week or so, if you will, and call to memory the mini-revolt in the Janata Dal (United). The reason was Sharad Yadav's insistence on admitting Samata-man Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav into the party.

Now it is the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in Bihar who have turned against him. The BJP, which had a poll alliance with the JD-U, now blames Sharad Yadav for the defeat of its candidate Jay Krishna Mandal at the hands of Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav: campaign committee convenor Chandra Mohan Roy says the latter enjoyed the JD-U chief's patronage.

Sources said the BJP's central leadership would take up the matter with the JD-U.

The BJP's claim that Pappu Yadav had the Union minister's blessings is in light of the fact that none of the JD-U's top leaders campaigned for the BJP candidate after the NDA came to power at the Centre.

Earlier, during campaign in September, Ram Vilas Paswan and Leader of Opposition in state assembly Sushil Kumar Modi had visited Pappu Yadav's house, which sent wrong signals to the BJP camp. Though both of them later clarified that their chopper had to make a forced landing and they were driven to Pappu Yadav's house by some of his supporters, the damage was done.

More than Pappu Yadav's victory, what alarms the Samata and BJP leaders is Sharad Yadav's attempt to emerge a key player in the state politics. They did not want the JD-U to become another Rashtriya Janata Dal, they said.

The induction of former Union fertiliser minister Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, arguably the most powerful Yadav leader in Bihar before Laloo Prasad Yadav came into the picture, was strongly resented by a couple of Samata and BJP leaders.

The ex-minister, after he was named in the Rs 1.33 billion urea scam, was in political wilderness. But he played his cards well and campaigned for Sharad Yadav in Madhepura. The latter obliged by admitting him into the party without taking other senior leaders into confidence.

The alleged support to Pappu Yadav is likely to erode Sharad Yadav's base among non-Yadav leaders. More than Laloo Prasad the person, it was the Yadavisation of the polity that forced many of the non-Yadavs to part ways with the RJD.

Embarrassingly for Sharad Yadav, both Ram Lakhan and Pappu are notorious. While the former figures in the urea scam, the latter is a criminal who fought the election from behind the bars. A Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry is on against him for his alleged involvement in Communist Party of India-Marxist MLA Ajit Sarkar's murder last year.

While Pappu is yet to react to the allegation that he had JD-U backing, Ram Lakhan in a press conference on Thursday called upon partymen to end the bickering. He appealed to them not to betray the trust the people have reposed.

Sharad Yadav's weakness, as some political observers see, is that though he defeated the strongest Yadav leader, Laloo Prasad, he is yet to be recognised as the leader of that caste. In Madhepura his victory was possible because of the non-Yadav votes; less than 15 per cent of the Yadavs voted for him. His roping in Ram Lakhan is, thus, seen as a move to expand his base in the Yadav community.

It is precisely for these reasons that the merger of the Samata into the JD-U has been put in cold storage. Samata men raised their flag instead of the JD-U's when they went to receive Surface Transport Minister Nitish Kumar last week. Now, they even issue press releases under the Samata's name, and not that of the JD-U as was the case earlier.

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