27/08/2014

 

Mandal goes upside-down as five of 10 new MLAs are from upper castes

 


Patna,(BiharTimes): Though the grand alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress fought the by-polls for the 10 seat on the plank of Mandal, social justice and secularism half of those who got elected belonged to the upper castes, while no Muslim could win.
Incidentally, four of these legislators belonged to the parties which champion the cause of the Mandal and social justice. In contrast three out of four victorious canidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party come from either backward or mahadalit sections of the society.
Two of the 10 seats––Mohania and Rajnagar––were Scheduled Castes reserved. While the BJP bagged the former the RJD retained the second one.
BJP’s Ram Narayan Mandal (Banka) and Awadesh Singh (Hajipur) come from the backward castes while the sole upper caste candidates of the party who won the election is Rashmi Verma, a Kayastha, from Narkatiaganj.
In contrast Randhir Singh of RJD, who won from Chapra, is a Rajput while R N Singh, Janata Dal (United), and Ajit Sharma, Congress, who won from Parbatta and Bhagalpur seats respectively are Bhumihars. The new Janata Dal (United)’sMLA from Jale is Rishi Mishra, a Brahmin. He is the grandson of former Railway Minister Lalit Naryan Mishra. His father Vijay Kumar Mishra was the BJP MLA, who crossed over to the Janata Dal (United) recently. Thus both the newly elected JD(U) MLAs are from the upper castes. The only backward caste MLAs to be elected on RJD ticket is Ajay Kumar Bulganin, who got elected from Mohiuddinnagar by a margin of 21,530 votes.
Incidentally, the upper caste candidates like R N Singh, Randhir Singh and Ajit Sharma won by quite a comfortable margin of 56,990, 24106 and 17,229 votes.
An analysis of the voting pattern suggested that the upper castes was not affected by the Mandal rhetoric and voted tactfully.
Incidentally, both the Muslim candidates, who were in fray, lost. While Fakhruaddin Khan of Congress lost in Narkatiaganj by a margin of 15,742 votes the RJD candidate from Banka, Iqbal Husain Ansari, lost to Ram Narayan Mandal of the BJP by just 711 votes.
Though two Scheduled Castes MLAs got elected because the seats were reserved the Extremely Backward Castes got marginalized, especially in the grand alliance.


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