After success of Voter Adhikar Yatra, Grand Alliance plans another yatra in Bihar

A week on since Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra concluded in Patna, the Opposition’s Grand Alliance is drawing up strategies to amp up its campaign in poll-bound Bihar; aware that the gains it made during the 17-day yatra could dissipate just as quickly in the absence of a robust follow-up.

Sources across the parties that constitute the alliance told The Federal that while Rahul’s ‘vote chor, gaddi chhod’ (vote thief, quit power) slogan has found huge resonance among Bihar’s voters, the need now was to amplify the message while simultaneously broadening the Opposition’s narrative to connect the threat of disenfranchisement with issues of citizens’ rights, livelihood and identity. With the controversial special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls still an ongoing exercise, the Grand Alliance constituents also want their respective booth level agents to intensify the scrutiny of the draft rolls published by the Election Commission (EC) on September 1 and help voters file claims and objections against any unjust deletion.

Plans to launch another yatra

Sources in the RJD told The Federal that plans are also being drawn up to launch another yatra covering a bulk of 130 Assembly constituencies which were left uncharted by Rahul, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and other alliance leaders during the 1,300 km Voter Adhikar Yatra.

Also read: Voter Adhikar Yatra, a people’s push against political manipulation

This follow-up yatra, sources said, will be modelled upon the Voter Adhikar Yatra but with a crucial difference – it will be led, for all practical purposes, by Tejashwi, with state-level leaders from the Congress and Left parties participating at different stretches.

The RJD, sources said, has already discussed the basic outline of this yatra with its allies. Contrary to reports in a section of the media that the plan for a second yatra was being drawn up arbitrarily by the RJD as the party felt that Rahul and not Tejashwi walked away with all plaudits for the Voter Adhikar Yatra, sources close to the RJD leadership told The Federal that there is a “consensus among all allies that a second yatra will help in sustaining the momentum” given to the Opposition’s campaign by the Voter Adhikar Yatra.

On September 3, Tejashwi had met his party’s MLAs and senior leaders to seek their feedback about the Voter Adhikar Yatra and suggestions for the route that the second yatra must take. At the same meeting, party leaders were also instructed to ensure that BLAs must go through the draft electoral rolls relevant to their respective polling booths and ensure that any wrongful voter deletion is rectified.

No rift between Congress and RJD

While the second yatra is expected to largely be a ‘Tejashwi show’, sources said discussions were also on between the RJD and the Congress to identify areas where Rahul and his sister, Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi, could also participate. This, sources in the alliance said, would help fend off “rumours being spread by the BJP” of a rift between the RJD and the Congress over the prominence that Rahul got during the Voter Adhikar Yatra. The Congress, predictably, has decided that Rahul and Priyanka will be at the centre stage of their Bihar campaign.

Also read: Opposition in Bihar to counter Modi’s ‘mother insult’ charge with aggression

A senior leader from one of the Left parties in Bihar dismissed reports of a rift between the RJD and the Congress as “usual BJP propaganda” and told The Federal that the Opposition in the state was more united now than ever before because the massive public participation witnessed during the Voter Adhikar Yatra was also a “message to the Grand Alliance to put all personal differences aside and stay united in the interest of Bihar”.

“We all realise that the mission is to remove Narendra Modi (from power). The Bihar elections will have an impact on the health of the government sitting in Delhi. There would be a ripple effect. Even Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu are waiting for Bihar results because they can change the county’s political landscape,” the Left leader claimed, hinting that an electoral upset for the BJP in Patna could trigger instability for the ruling coalition in Delhi.

There is also some clarity emerging within the alliance on how it plans to broaden its narrative for the elections beyond the allegations of “vote chori”. Sources told The Federal that while the interlinked issues of vote theft and the SIR will remain the driving force of the campaign, there is consensus within the alliance on Tejashwi’s suggestion that the Opposition must link all other issues to the threat of disenfranchisement that the SIR represents.

Also read: Ground report: Rahul’s ‘hydrogen bomb’ may involve Haryana shockers

“Tejashwi has said that vote chori and SIR are just the first step in a series on assaults that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP are planning on the people, especially voters of the Opposition parties. Once a voter is disenfranchised, the next steps will follow, which will include questioning the deleted voters’ citizenship. Once that begins, all other rights that a citizen enjoys will be threatened… they will start denying these people ration cards, benefits of other central schemes. This is what we need to explain to the people now,” a senior Opposition leader from the state said.

Bouquet of guarantees

The Congress, fully on board with Tejashwi’s argument, believes that the Opposition’s campaign must contrast the “injustice” that the Centre plans to wreak on the citizens with the “welfare and social justice model” that the Grand Alliance represents. A Congress leader privy to the campaign plans for Bihar said the party’s state leadership will be “reaching out to the people a guarantee ka guldasta (a bouquet of guarantees) including health insurance of up to Rs 25 lakh, 200 units of free electricity, Rs 1,500 pension for disabled persons, Rs 2,500 financial assistance to women under the ‘mai-behan maan yojana’, among others.”

Sources said the alliance leaders also hope to start their seat-sharing negotiations soon after the Vice Presidential election concludes on September 9. There is, however, some nervousness within a section of the alliance leaders, particularly from the RJD, that the Congress, buoyed by the success of Rahul’s Voter Adhikar Yatra, may make unreasonable demands for the number of seats it wishes to contest in the upcoming polls.

Seat-sharing to be finalised

A senior Bihar MLA told The Federal that a section of his party leaders wants the seat-sharing formula to be finalised before the Grand Alliance firms up a joint campaign strategy. The party believes a clarity of the number of seats it will get to contest will help the Bihar Congress finalise the campaign plans for Rahul and Priyanka as the involvement of the Nehru-Gandhi siblings is critical for the success of the party at the hustings.

Sources say while the RJD had initially hoped to give just about 55 seats to the Congress, down from the 70 seats the party contested in 2020 when it managed to win just 19 seats, Tejashwi may be “amenable to giving a few more in the interest of Opposition unity”. The Congress’s argument, however, is that it doesn’t just want a good number of seats to contest but for the RJD to concede seats where the Congress also has a real shot at victory.

“Last time we got 70 seats but many of them were constituencies where even our coalition partner couldn’t have won,” another Bihar Congress MLA said, adding that the party must place greater emphasis not on the quantity of seats it gets but on securing seats where Rahul’s yatra has triggered a palpable Congress revival.

A leader close to Tejashwi, however, claimed that the media must not blow the “nok-jhok” (bickering) over seat-sharing out of proportion. “Whenever seat-sharing talks begin in any alliance, each constituent tries to get the maximum share possible and makes arguments for this accordingly. Just today, I was reading somewhere that the JD-U is adamant to contest one seat more than the BJP but does that mean that the NDA has collapsed already? We are confident that our seat-sharing will be finalised without any bad blood and we will defeat the NDA. Just be patient for a few weeks and everything will be clear,” the RJD leader said.