Shatrughan Sinha finds is being seen as an inaccessible leader and is accused of spending most of his time in Mumbai.
Patna: Union Minister for Law, Justice and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Patna Sahib, has evolved a novel way to reach out to the voters ever since he started his campaign as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from the last week of March. In the last one month, Prasad, 64, has made it a point to visit every park and garden in the city and interact with voters.
Prasad makes it a point to leave his Boring Road home before sunrise for one of the many pre-decided parks and spends nearly two hours there interacting with citizens before starting on his campaign trail across Patna.
While Prasad begins his campaign at 5 am, Shatrughan Sinha starts it 11 hours later. During one such campaign trip, the film-star-turned-politician started the road show from Congress Maidan on a canopy covered vehicle, moved about 100 metres only and soon went back to his air-conditioned vehicle. Luv Sinha, his son, is managing the campaign and coordinating between the state Congress headquarters and his father.
Shatrughan Sinha, who is fighting the election on a Congress ticket, began his campaign only last week and is finding it hard to break the image of an inaccessible leader, something which had led to posters coming up across the city a few years ago stating that “our MP (Sinha) has gone missing”.
The 72-year-old Sinha has been accused by his detractors of spending most of his time in Mumbai, while he has deputed his staff at his Kadamkuan residence to solve the problems of voters of Patna.
When Sinha visited the Congress headquarters in Sadaqat Ashram after joining the Congress, he had to face vocal protests from party workers over his “outsider” tag. Locals say that even when he comes to Patna for a day or two, he rarely stays in his home in Kadamkuan and functions from a posh hotel.
He has often been accused of not bringing any major infrastructure or employment related project in Patna in the last decade despite being a two-term MP and someone who enjoys cordial relations with leaders cutting across party lines.
Patna Sahib, which is predominantly an urban seat, has six Assembly segments, out of which five—Patna Sahib (Nandkishor Yadav), Kumhrar (Arun Kumar Sinha), Bankipur (Nitin Nabin), Digha (Sanjiv Chaurasia) and Bakhtiarpur (Ranvijay Singh)—are with the BJP, while the sixth, Fatuha, is held by RJD’s Rama Nand Yadav. Of the about 21 lakh voters (2015), around 30% are Kayastha voters, a community to which both Sinha and Prasad belong.
Prasad, who is contesting a Lok Sabha election for the first time and is from a family that has been associated with the Jan Sangh, is banking on the strong support for the BJP in the seat, a Narendra Modi undercurrent and his image of being a local boy who, if elected to power, would be accessible to the people of Patna unlike Sinha, and would bring in major infrastructure-related development in the capital because of his resources and his position in the party’s hierarchy.
Prasad’s supporters credit him for bringing the Metro rail to Patna—the stone for the project was laid by Prime Minister Modi in February this year and the Metro is expected to run from 2024.
However, he is also facing challenges, especially when it comes to handling an angry Rajya Sabha MP, R.K. Sinha, who has not tried to hide his unhappiness over his and his son’s claim being ignored for the Patna seat.
On Wednesday, Sinha, who came to Patna for a brief visit, met RSS general secretary Bhaiyaji Joshi after which he shared news clipping on his Facebook page that showed how he was angry over the denial of ticket to him. R.K. Sinha also did not respond to media queries on whether he was going to campaign for Prasad or not. Sinha, who also belongs to the Kayastha community, commands a strong hold over the community and he had used his friendly relations with the office bearers of different Kayastha social groups to compel the BJP to give him the ticket, but ultimately failed in securing it.
Earlier last month, when Prasad came to Patna to start his campaigning, a violent clash had taken place between his and the supporters of Sinha at Patna airport, leaving nothing to the imagination as to how the two leaders were placed.
Prasad is also trying hard to get the support of the approximately three lakh Muslim voters who have traditionally voted for Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal and is using the “achievement” of the banning of triple talaq to seek votes from them, especially women voters.