Patna,(BiharTimes): In 1977 the hurriedly formed Janata Party swept the election winning all the 54 parliamentary seats. Some of the candidates, who won, such as Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, were still in their late 20s.

Ram Vilas won by a record margin while Lalu too trounced his opponent by a huge margin of over three lakh votes.

Several other new-comers also achieved big victories elsewhere in the country. So the anti-Congress wave against Emergency helped many young activists become nationally famed leaders.

In contrast what is happening in Bihar––and elsewhere too––is something very surprising. Parties are busy wooing ‘strong’ candidates from rival parties and still claiming that wave is sweeping in their favour.

While Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal has in the recent days wooed Avinish Singh, Rana Gangeshwar Singh, Devendra Yadav and is in the process of alluring some more in the days to come. The party is quickly giving tickets to all the new-comers. Nitish won back noted film maker, Prakash Jha and he too is the party’s candidate. The four RJD MLAs, who rebelled––Samrat Chaudhary, Akhtar-ul-Iman, Jawaid Eqbal Ansari, and Raghvendra Pratap Singh––are also likely to get the party ticket for Lok Sabha.

On the other hand the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is claiming of big Narendra Modi wave is running short of candidates. But it remains a mystery as to why the party is not fielding fresh faces as the Janata Party did in 1977. Instead it is relying heavily on the ‘borrowed’ players. Be it Sushil Singh, Captain Jai Narayan Nishad, O P Yadav, Putul Kumari etc all are the sitting MPs of Janata Dal (United) or are Independents. Now the party is likely to open its door for RJD’s Ram Kripal Yadav. At one point of time there was talk of even Sadhu Yadav and Ranvir Yadav crossing over to the BJP.

As if that was not enough the BJP formed an alliance with Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtiya Lok Samata Party and left 10 out of 40 seats for them.

Ironically, the LJP, which earlier demanded nine seats from the BJP is unable to find candidate for the seventh seat. It is now reportedly busy offering Mehboob Ali Qaiser of Congress the Khagaria seat.

Why the BJP is not relying on their own leaders like Ashwani Choubey, Giriraj Singh, Amarendra Pratap Singh etc. After all they are much stronger and popular state-level leader than Lalu Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan were in 1977.

This is high time for the BJP to do so. After all it gave ticket to Syed Shahnawaz Husain in late 1990s when he was in his early 30s. But this time the party has developed cold feet and not going for it. Yet it is making a claim of big wave in its favour.