Many Riders in the Bihar Caravan

Fear of disenfranchisement due to the revision of electoral rolls is driving large numbers to the INDIA bloc's Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar, but that's no guarantee of a spike in anti-BJP votes

- Md Asghar Khan

In a different era, it would have been a surreal sight considering the sheer range within the Indian political spectrum represented by the protagonists—Tamil Nadu chief minister M. K. Stalin of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the original party of Dravidian pride, doing a roadshow together with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav and CPI(ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya, among others, in poll-bound Bihar on August 27. The picture-perfect moment seemed to be designed to showcase the opposition INDIA bloc as a national family of sorts, united against what Stalin joined the others in denouncing from the campaign pulpit as a “threat to democracy in India”, now summed up in two words: “vote chori” (vote theft).

While political pundits might recall the Delhi polls earlier this year when two key INDIA bloc partners—the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)—chose to go solo even at the cost of enabling a decisive BJP win, and suggest the DMK may similarly end up facing off with the grand old party in the Tamil Nadu polls next year, similar concerns regarding RJD-Congress ties are not top-of-the-mind for 55-year-old Yadav waiting on the road linking the district towns Lakhisarai and Munger just to catch a glimpse of Rahul during the Voter Adhikar Yatra that had been flagged off on August 17 at Sasaram.