As Rahul’s Voter Adhikar Yatra approaches climax, the real test begins now

Traversing over 1,300 kilometres across 25 districts and over 100 Assembly constituencies in poll-bound Bihar, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ will conclude in the state capital Patna on Monday (September 1).

Rahul, along with his yatra co-travellers Tejashwi Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Dipankar Bhattacharya of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation (CPI-MLL), and Mukesh Sahni of Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), and supporters of political parties that collectively constitute the Opposition’s Grand Alliance in Bihar, will gather at Gandhi Maidan around 10.30 am.

Connecting Gandhi and Ambedkar

With their earlier plan of addressing a mega rally at the iconic public ground tweaked to maximise political dividends, the leaders will be joined by peers from other Opposition outfits of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) Bloc and march from the Gandhi Maidan to the Babasaheb Ambedkar Park on Nehru Path, where they will collectively address a public meeting.

Also read: Bihar SIR: Is EC using ‘citizenship doubts’ to disenfranchise 3 lakh voters? | Capital Beat

Monday’s ‘Voter Adhikar March’ has been cleverly billed as a journey that starts with Gandhi and concludes at Ambedkar (Gandhi se Ambedkar), a move high on political symbolism that seamlessly fuses the Father of the Nation’s signature non-violent agitation with the Father of the Indian Constitution’s quest for an egalitarian society in an electoral democracy.

The Grand Alliance may have successfully educated Bihar’s more than 7.24 crore electors about the sanctity of their votes, the struggle to convince them to exercise their franchise in favour of the Opposition come the election, begins now.

Message to EC

That the culmination of Rahul’s yatra coincides with September 1, the cut-off date set by the Election Commission (EC) for submitting claims and objections against its controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls, is no surprise either.

After all, for the past fortnight of his yatra, Rahul, along with Tejashwi and other Grand Alliance leaders, has belligerently asserted that they will not let the EC and the BJP's alleged collusion to succeed in “stealing the Bihar election” through a so-called purification of electoral rolls that, in their view, is motivated by partisan political interests.

Also read: SC to hear RJD, AIMIM pleas on Bihar voter list deadline on Sept 1

The final lap of Rahul’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ is expected to reiterate this message with ever greater gusto, even as the Supreme Court continues to weigh in on the clutch of petitions filed before it by sundry Opposition parties, NGOs and activists challenging the legal and constitutional tenability of the SIR.

Beyond inner differences

In last two weeks or so, Rahul and the wider Opposition’s greatest success in Bihar has, arguably, been their ability to set aside the conflicting political aspirations of their respective parties and lead a cohesive campaign against alleged “vote chori” (vote theft), which the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha claimed was being “institutionalised by the SIR”.

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That all’s not well with the poll panel’s exercise to revise electoral rolls in the state is now a message that has seeped into Bihar’s political consciousness.

A testament to this have been the massive crowds that have thronged the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ throughout its winding route; even in the final lap when the BJP launched a scathing diatribe against Rahul after the befuddling episode of an alleged Congress political worker taking the stage at an event that Rahul, Priyanka Gandhi and Tejashwi had left moments ago and hurling abuses at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Real test begins now

The true political success of the yatra, however, doesn’t lie in what it has achieved in the past fortnight. With at least a month left before the poll panel actually announces the schedule for the Bihar polls, the real test for the Opposition in the state will start once Rahul leaves Patna after his public meeting at Ambedkar Park.

Also read: Rahul Gandhi asks EC how 947 voters reside in one house in Bihar

The Grand Alliance may have successfully educated Bihar’s more than 7.24 crore electors – a mammoth yet troubling count as it excludes over 65 lakh voters whose names have currently been deleted from the rolls under various categories of exclusion – about the sanctity of their votes, the struggle to convince them to exercise their franchise in favour of the Opposition come the election, begins now.

Focus shifts to seat-sharing

The Opposition will need to ensure that the reverberations of the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ sustain beyond the jamboree expected at Ambedkar Park. Sources in the Grand Alliance told The Federal that seat-sharing talks between the Congress, RJD, Left Parties, and the VIP are set to begin this week itself, and the allies hope to conclude a bulk of their negotiations within the next fortnight.

Also read: ‘Dead’ voters walking in Bihar, hundreds deleted from rolls in villages near Patna

“There is already a broad consensus on the number of seats each of the parties in the alliance will contest, but whatever disagreements there are on some seats, we will sort out very soon. You have to understand that the need for keeping this alliance intact has now gone beyond what we as political parties want; it is now being dictated by the people of Bihar, and we will have to respect that or perish,” a senior alliance leader told The Federal.

Boost to Congress's confidence

A Congress leader from Seemanchal, however, pointed out that the yatra had shown to the RJD that his party was “not the liability that it was seen to be during the last few elections”.

“Massive appeal of Rahul Gandhi among Dalits, minorities, and backward castes had infused fresh life into the Congress. Sanghathan ki kuch kamiyan ab bhi hain (organisational deficiencies exist even now), but Rahulji’s yatra has ensured that the voters will look beyond these shortcomings,” the leader, a former MLA, said, adding that “our claim for seats should not be dismissed based on our past performance; it should be assessed based on how the voters view Rahulji’s Congress after the yatra compared to before”.

Also read: Akhilesh Yadav mocks RSS chief Bhagwat, endorses Tejashwi for Bihar elections

RJD leaders conceded that the “biggest gainer” from the yatra is likely to be the Congress, but also cautioned that the Grand Old Party, which had won just 19 of the 70 assembly seats it contested in the state in 2020, must not mistake the huge crowds the yatra drew as a yardstick for popular electoral support.

Crowd factor could be misleading: RJD leader

“A lot can change between now and the election and a lot will depend on not just the number of seats allocated to each party in the alliance, but also on which seats each party gets and the candidates it shortlists… crowds are the most misleading factor in an election and in any case the Congress should not forget that it wasn’t just their supporters who came to the yatra; every party in the alliance has its own distinct support base and all of them turned up in equal numbers,” said a senior RJD office bearer and a close aide of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Grand Alliance leaders also agree that while the yatra has been a “great success” in highlighting the SIR issue, it is now important that the Opposition must “keep up pressure against SIR but not get stuck at it.”

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“Now we have to address state-specific issues other than SIR; we need to go big on issues like rising unemployment, displacement, and migration during Nitish Kumar’s rul,e and our original ‘Naukri Matlab Tejashwi’ (Tejashwi means jobs) campaign, we also have to continue our EBC and Dalit outreach. Our coordination committee should finalise the joint campaign plans and identify common issues we have to raise so that our campaign on these issues can start without delay,” another RJD leader said.

Prashant Kishor factor

Both the Congress and the RJD believe it is “important to not dismiss the Prashant Kishor factor lightly” and that the Grand Alliance must “periodically keep checking whether Kishor is denting our voter base or the NDA’s voter base”.

Also read: Rahul alleges ‘institutionalised vote theft’ in Bihar, questions BJP's silence

“Kishor is running a different type of campaign, which is finding some resonance among youth because of his focus on education, jobs, and stopping migration. These are caste-neutral issues, and so it is difficult to say who he will damage electorally if his campaign picks up,” said a Congress worker from Muzaffarpur.