Jehanabad margin, not defeat, should cause jitters to NDA

GAYA: In their heart of hearts, even diehard NDA supporters did not expect JD (U) candidate Abhiram Sharma to win the Jehanabad assembly seat. But nobody expected the margin to be so big, especially when nearly half of the total voters stayed away from the polling stations on March 9.
Late Mundrika Singh Yadav won the seat by a margin of 30,000 votes in 2015. His son, Kumar Krishna Mohan alias Suday Yadav, improved the margin by a good 5,000 votes.
This margin becomes all the more massive when one takes into account the fact that as against nearly 56% votes polled in 2015, only about 50% voters exercised their franchise this time.
Poll pundits may attribute the NDA defeat to the candidature of Abhiram Sharma, a has-been politician of Magadh region, but it seems that even traditional NDA supporters went against it.
Take, for instance, the traders’ community. Conceding that the business community did not have much enthusiasm left for the Nitish Kumar-led NDA in the state, Central Bihar Chamber of Commerce president Kaushalendra Pratap Singh said the law and order situation in the region was horribly poor. “More than anything else, traders want security,” said Singh.
There are certain Jehanabad specifics that too caused this humiliating defeat. “Yadavisation of the Jehanabad Bhumihars and resultant extortion has further alienated the business community struggling to recover from the effects of demonetisation and GST,” said a Jehanabad businessman.
Making a comparison between overbearing Yadavas and Bhumihars, the trader said whereas you get sympathy from several sections, including the media and bureaucracy, for being hounded by goons having a Yadav surname, few such channels are available against the lumpen Bhumihars.
Another political lesson of the Jehanabad byelection is that an “in jail Lalu” is more formidable than an “on bail Lalu”, said Prof Ali Hussain, who teaches political science to undergrad and PG students.