How the BJP's Rise Changed Bihar's Left

The Left parties, once influential and then marginal, are now a catalyst of opposition unity in Bihar. Siwan shows how they have changed

- SANDIPAN CHATTERJEE

ON November 3, three days before the first phase of polling in Bihar, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav came to Raghunathpur assembly constituency in Siwan district to campaign for the INDIA bloc candidate, Osama Shahab.

To get a former chief minister from another state to campaign for a poll debutant takes something special. In this case, it was Shahab's identity—his late father was the gangster-turned-politician Mohammad Shahabuddin. The son is contesting on a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) ticket, the party his father represented.

Standing next to Shahabuddin's son on the dais and holding his hand in a show of unity was Amarjeet Kushwaha, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation) who represents the neighbouring Jiradei constituency in the assembly and is defending his seat in the election. The CPI(ML) (Liberation) has always held Shahabuddin to be the “real culprit” behind the 1997 murder of Chandrasekhar, better known as Comrade Chandu, a former student leader from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University who became a CPI(ML) organiser in the gangster's stronghold. For over a decade from the early 1990s to around 2005, the CPI(ML) (Liberation) had a series of conflicts, often bloody, with the gangs of Shahabuddin, whose writ then ran across and beyond Siwan. Chandrasekhar's photos still adorn the walls of every Liberation office, but the days of the party's bitter and bloody rivalries with Shahabuddin's men seem to have long gone.

Meanwhile, the RJD's Tejashwi Yadav, the chief ministerial face of the opposition alliance in Bihar, did not make it to Jiradei for a rally scheduled on November 1 as his helicopter could not take off due to bad weather. In a video message addressing the voters of Jiradei, Tejashwi apologised for his absence and urged them to ensure Kushwaha's victory. Indeed, Siwan's political alignments have changed unrecognisably in three decades.