Both JD(U) and Congress confident of victory in Munger

PATNA: Munger is among the five parliamentary constituencies going to the polls in the fourth phase on April 29. The constituency has come into the limelight owing to the fact that CM Nitish Kumar’s close aide and WRD minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh is locked in an electoral battle with Congress’s Neelam Devi, who is the wife of ‘bahubali’ (strongman) independent MLA from Mokama Anant Singh.
Apart from the upper Bhumihar caste tag, the only two other factors common to both Lalan and Anant are their clout and bid to contest the seat that was marked by their own share of hiccups.Earlier, Lalan was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2009 after the delimitation of the constituency that year. Unlike the past, it has turned into a “Bhumihar caste seat”.
Once it became clear that CM Nitish wanted to field Lalan from Munger from the JD(U) side, its sitting MP from another NDA partner, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), Veena Devi was hesitant to quit the seat for Lalan. Veena is the wife of ‘bahubali’ Surajbhan Singh, also from Mokama. Ultimately, her party yielded in exchange for the Nawada seat where the LJP fielded Surajbhan’s younger brother Chandan Kumar, who has already tested the electoral battle in the first phase on April 11.
A notch greater controversy got tagged to Anant’s bid to himself fight the seat on the Congress ticket. Initially, the Congress appeared hesitant and RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav also opposed his candidature saying his RJD would not support the don-turned-politician owing to his controversial background. However, Anant manoeuvred the situation to his eventual advantage by fielding his wife Neelam.
The background being as colourful as it could get, Munger has gained an eminence of sorts among the constituencies that are on popular watch list, while observers have also been keen on discussing who of the two — Lalan or Neelam — would win the election. There are no easy answers to that, though. For, both the Congress and JD(U) have been claiming to read the situation to their advantage.
“Where is the doubt regarding our win? The Congress candidate will win the election,” AICC panellist from the state Prem Chandra Mishra (MLC) said, adding that the JD(U) camp has already started showing signs of nervousness, as the administration has been harassing the Congress workers and also obstructing their vehicle movements “on one pretext or another” for the last couple of months.
Mishra also said Congress leaders — like new entrant Shatrughan Sinha and Raj Babbar — would address meetings and rallies in the constituency on April 27, while former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi has also addressed a meeting in favour of Neelam.
However, JD(U) spokesman Neeraj Kumar (MLC) said the prominent issues in the constituency veer around “criminalization of politics versus the development agenda”. Accordingly, Lalan has been mainly banking on the images of PM Narendra Modi and Nitish.
Neeraj said developmental steps taken by both the Centre and the state governments — like construction and commissioning of railway bridge across the river Ganga and ongoing construction of second tunnel through Jamalpur Hills for the swift movement of trains, opening of Munger University and a proposed mega road bridge across the Ganga, as well as four-laning of the National Highway-80 and proposal regarding development of Mokama ‘taal’ (saucer shaped low land hit by waterlogging) — were in the minds of people in the area.