CALCUTTA, 20 April 2004 — Union Railway Minister Nitish Kumar is so unsure of retaining the Barh parliamentary seat that he is also contesting from the Nalanda constituency to enter the 14th Lok Sabha.
Nitish, a senior JD(U) leader known for his proximity to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, admitted on the eve of polling: “Barh is proving very difficult but Nalanda is not. Anyway I hope to win both.”
Polling will be held today in 11 Bihar constituencies, including Barh and Nalanda, in the first phase of general elections.
Nitish won the Barh seat in 1999 by a whisker defeating Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Vijay Krishna in a do-or-die battle. But Krishna, who lost to Nitish in 1996, 1998 and 1999, is sure of routing him this time.
By all accounts, Nitish faces an uphill task in Barh — a constituency which elected him five times in a row. Krishna claims that Nitish has already conceded “defeat” in Barh by contesting from Nalanda too.
Thanks to caste equations, Nitish’s electoral prospects are defintely brighter in the adjoining Nalanda seat in central Bihar where he is pitted against Pushpanjay Kumar of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), a constituent of the RJD-led secular alliance.
Nitish was so jittery that he cajoled Defense MInister George Fernandes to let him contest from Nalanda which returned Fernandes to Parliament in 1999. To Nitish’s great relief, Fernandes agreed to shift to his old constituency, Muzaffarpur.
Nitish tried to woo Barh voters with a string of projects like a railway container factory at Fatuha, a thermal power plant and coach maintenance factory at Harnaut whose foundation was laid by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. But all his efforts to project himself as “Vikas Purush” or “Mr. Development” went to waste as RJD supremo Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ramvilas Paswan left no stones unturned to drive him out of Barh.
