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| India-Pakistan |
| Voters do what courts could not |
| 2009-05-17 |
| Patna, May 17: The men with the guns did not go very far in Bihar this election, even with a kind word and, often, a softer face. Several dons bit the dust whichever party they came from, and whether they contested themselves or, barred by the courts, fielded their wives or mothers. The Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Mohammed Shahabuddin, serving a life term for murder, saw his devout and soft-spoken wife, Heena Sahab, lose to an Independent from Siwan, which he had lorded over with an iron fist since the 1996 polls. “Siwan was only half liberated when the court convicted Shahabuddin. We have completed the liberation by defeating Heena Sahab,” said Nagendra Singh, a resident of Karchhui bazaar in Siwan district. The courts could not stop Janata Dal (United) dons Prabhunath Singh and Munna Shukla, but the voters of Maharajganj and Vaishali did. Former RJD MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, jailed for life for the murder of CPM legislator Ajit Sarkar, had taken no chances. He had fielded both his mother Shanti Priya and wife Ranjita Ranjan with Congress help from Purnea and Supaul. Both have lost. Still, it may be premature to see in the defeats of the dons a new dawn for Bihar, notorious for sending criminal-turned-politicians in hordes to the Lok Sabha since the 1980s. Eleven of the state’s 40 winners face one or more criminal cases — out of 150 such MPs in the House — although this figure is far lower than Uttar Pradesh’s 31 and Maharashtra’s 23. Umakant Singh, a senior Congress leader, sees hope. He said: “It’s a welcome change in Bihar. The voters have become wiser, electing performers and men of clean image. It’s a good sign for democracy in general and Bihar politics in particular.” Some may be tempted to credit the voters’ show of courage to the improvement of law and order under Nitish Kumar, although they cannot miss the irony: at least three of the defeated dons were from the chief minister’s party. Many had feared that JD(U) muscleman Munna Shukla would intimidate voters and defeat RJD minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, the “hero” of the UPA’s rural job guarantee scheme. But the voters of Vaishali gave the Union rural development minister, known as a “sadhu” for his honesty and efficiency, a 21,000-vote win over a man facing more than 10 cases of murder, abduction and highway heists. Arra rejected the Lok Janshakti Party’s Rama Singh, accused in over a dozen murders and kidnappings, while “clean” RJD candidate Umashankar Singh trounced JD(U) gangster Prabhunath, who allegedly killed MLA Ashok Singh in Patna in 1999. Among jailed dons who watched family members lose were former Ballia MP Surajbhan of the LJP and Sunil Pandey of the JD(U), the Piro MLA. |
| Posted by:john frum |