A former Maoist zonal commander. A retired head of state police. A democratic ultra-Left underdog. And an ex-MP expelled from Parliament. Their battle at the polls this week in one of India’s most ‘Naxal-infested’ constituencies encapsulates the political madness that is the method in Jharkhand.
YahooNews, 8 April, 2014
It is seven in the morning. Kameshwar Baitha, 59, clad in whites, is presiding over the listless chaos that I gather is routine at Baitha Niwas in Bishrampur, in Jharkhand’s Palamu district. Campaign vehicles laze outside the gate draped in Trinamool Congress posters featuring Mamata Banerjee frozen in her stride. A few security personnel bathe in the cramped, cemented front yard. The sitting MP’s campaign managers sulk as one of Baitha’s sons distributes what appears to be insufficient cash.
A laboratory for political experiments. That is how an exasperated Arjun Munda, former chief minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party, described Jharkhand last year. The state has seen nine governments and five chief ministers, one of them an independent MLA, since it was formed in November 2000. In these 13 years, politicians jumped parties and parties switched alliances as frequently and unabashedly as soldiers of fortune. Palamu, the Lok Sabha constituency that covers all of Garhwa district and a part of Palamu district, is no exception to Jharkhand’s politics of convenience.
Reserved for candidates from the scheduled castes, this erstwhile Congress bastion became a BJP stronghold during the saffron decade of the 1990s when the party registered four consecutive wins here. The formation of the state upset local equations. And very little has stayed constant since.
Take Baitha. Once a feared Maoist zonal commander who carried a reward of Rs 7 lakh on his head, Baitha was arrested in 2006 after a 26-year reign of terror. Charged in 51 cases of murder and violence in the neighboring districts of Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, he was released on bail only in 2011. He is India’s MP with the maximum number of criminal charges against him.
He contested the 2007 bypoll from jail on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket and came second, ahead of the BJP candidate. In 2009, Baitha returned as a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (National Democratic Alliance) candidate to defeat the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (United) candidates by a fair margin. And this year he is contesting from the TMC.
“I got only two and a half years to work for my people and I did as much as I could. I also asked 36 questions in Parliament,” Baitha claims before proceeding to read out a laundry list of achievements. “They (political opponents) say I have not done anything. What have they and their parties done in all these years?”
Baitha says he was “saved by god from getting sucked into communal politics” when the BJP refused him a ticket. What he isn’t saying is that even getting a Trinamool ticket was a big gamble. Dadai Dubey, Congress MLA from Bishrampur and till recently a minister in the Hemant Soren government, fell out with the party after openly criticizing it and joined the TMC as recently as early March. Dubey was Baitha’s emissary to Mamata Banerjeee.
“I got inspired by Mamata Banerjee. Her model of development weaned people away from Naxalism in Bengal. I want to fight Naxalism in Palamu the same way,” he says. He adds quickly that few know about the TMC in his constituency and that he, not the party, will be drawing the votes.
As the BSP candidate in 2007, he drew nearly one and a half lakh votes. (Before Baitha in 2004, the party managed 61,000 votes. In 2009, going against Baitha, the party got only 43,000 votes.) But not everyone shares Baitha’s confidence in his personal charms. Certainly, the sympathy wave generated by his wife Deomani Devi campaigning for her jailed husband in 2009 is missing this time.
And Baitha’s own aides say that the tacit Maoist support is missing too. “Baitha knew that security alone wouldn’t protect him. So he and his eldest son struck some deal to buy safety. But having lost his base, he is no more useful for the Maoists. Today, he won’t even win a ward election. He knows it himself and that’s why he has stopped spending money,” sniggers one of his campaign managers.
Deomani Devi will have none of it. “This time sahib himself is campaigning and the people are responding warmly. We don’t have enough funds as the party [TMC] has not offered any. But who says we have given up hope?” And then she adds rather poetically, “Ummidwar toh ummeed se hi bante hai na (You only become a hopeful by hoping, don’t you)?”
In a brief, dramatic speech on the Lokpal Bill in the Lok Sabha in 2011, Baitha had said that over 26 years he fought for the victims of feudalism who had no food or dignity. “In those years, it seemed corruption is in the villages. Now after coming to the big city, I hear in Parliament that Rs 68-75 lakh crore in black money is hidden abroad. Baap re baap! I though the robbers were in villages when the real dacoits are sitting here. That’s why Jharkhand is burning and the Maoist movement is gaining ground.”
At Baitha Niwas, he reiterates this anguish. “Jharkhand is rich in minerals but still our people are the poorest. It’s a conspiracy of the big capital and big politics. Our platform is separate. We [TMC] will emerge as the third largest party and form a third front,” he says, before tearing into Babulal Marandi’s “dangerous domicile policy”.
Asked if he is confident of a victory this time, Baitha fidgets. “Win or lose, what is important is reaching out to one’s people.” The next moment, he attempts a recovery. “People are weighing the alternatives. Will they vote for Manoj Bhuiyan who gave Palamu such a bad name for just one lakh rupees? Or for VD Ram whose in-laws in Daltanganj are his only local connection?”
Then Baitha flashes a fulsome smile. “I belong here. Pauhna se chor nahin marta (Can’t depend on a son-in-law to guard against thieves).”
* * *
Well past midnight, the bellboys have settled down on the sofas, watching TV in the lounge of a Daltonganj hotel.
A noise at the shuttered entrance of the hotel. The guard lifts the shutter to let in Palamu’s most talked about son-in-law returning from his 16-hour-plus daily campaign. VD Ram is so exhausted he can barely keep his eyes open. “I am really in no position to talk,” he mumbles as we start the discussion that was scheduled for 11.15pm.
When former Maoist zonal commander Kameshwar Baitha was behind bars in Bihar and Jharkhand, Vishnu Dayal Ram was Jharkhand’s Director-General of Police (DGP). He retired in 2011, the year Baitha was released on bail. He is now the BJP candidate from Palamu. Ram had to fight Baitha within the party as the latter was also eyeing a BJP ticket after the UPA (Congress-JMM-RJD) decided to field an RJD, and not a JMM, candidate from Palamu this time.
While many in the state see this as a face-off between the “symbols of a police state and a rebel militia”, Baitha refuses to get drawn into that debate.
Ram has reasons for campaigning like one possessed. None of the six Assembly segments – Bhawanathpur, Bishrampur, Daltonganj (Congress), Garhwa (Jharkhand Vikas Morcha), Hussainabad (RJD) and Chhatarpur (JD-U) – of the large Palamu parliamentary constituency is with the BJP.
A section of the local BJP is sympathetic to three-time-MP Braj Mohan Ram who was a strong contender for the ticket that went to Ram. Also, his brother-in-law Radha Krishna Kishore, then a JD(U) MLA, has already alienated a lot of voters in Chhatarpur by flaunting his powerful DGP jija-ji during 2004-2009.
Kishore, who came third in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls on a JD(U) ticket, won the Chhatarpur Assembly seat for the party in 2005. He tried his luck again at the Lok Sabha polls in 2009 for the JD(U), but performed dismally even with the BJP’s support. When the party refused him a ticket in the subsequent Assembly polls, he switched sides to contest from Chhatarpur on a Congress ticket and lost. This time around, he is campaigning for Ram.
Luckily, the decorated police officer has his supportive family. Ram’s elder son Vikas Anand took a break from his MNC job to be with his father, whom he calls a self-made man. “He was born in Ara (Bihar) but the only family we have is the one from our mother’s side here in Nai Mahalla (Daltonganj). My mother and sister are also here to look after him.” The younger son, a general manager with a cola giant, is missing in action, though.
Ram made news early in his career for his possible involvement in the Bhagalpur blinding case of 1980-81. It is the case on which the 2003 Ajay Devgn-starrer Gangajal was based (‘Gangajal’ being slang for the acid that several policemen poured into the eyes of under-trials). While the CBI interrogated Ram, he was not charged with any involvement.
Decades later, during his second tenure as DGP of Jharkhand, he was removed from office in 2010due to allegations of a dubious withdrawal of Rs 5.6 crore (some claim Rs 8 crore) from the Secret Service Fund. SS funds are supposed to be distributed among the district police chiefs for intelligence gathering for which no accounts are required to be maintained. Ram apparently withdrew sacks of cash and never transferred any to his SPs. In his affidavit to the court, he claimed to have distributed crores in cash directly among police informers at Ranchi’s Birsa Munda Stadium (Morabadi ground) one night in 2006.
Subsequently, the CBI refused to probe the case because it claimed to be “overburdened”. Incidentally, then-CBI chief AP Singh is a 1974 batch IPS officer and a year junior to Ram in the cadre. The reporter who broke the story for a national daily confided to me that Ram had repeatedly asked him not to go ahead with the report when the reporter asked him for his version.
Manning the BJP campaign headquarters in Daltonganj, elder son Vikas fields questions on his father’s behalf and dismisses the money allegations as a conspiracy. “When you are in important positions, you create enemies. We in the family know that my father had to dilute his fixed deposits to fund this campaign,” he claims.
Vikas also discounts the complaints that his father is a rank outsider. “Initially, maybe there was some resistance. But it helped that he has been here, reaching out to party functionaries and people for the last 8-9 months. Now this is an issue for his rivals only.”
Ram knows he has a close fight at hand with the RJD’s Manoj Bhuiyan this time. The BJP is eyeing Palamu’s upper caste votes while the RJD is targeting the Muslims. Of the backward castes, the Banias traditionally back the BJP and the Yadavs the RJD. Chunks of Dalit votes will go to the BSP and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. The BJP hopes that Ram’s Dalit identity will help them fight the RJD over the remaining votes. The Adivasis are said to have their loyalty divided primarily between former BJP leader Babulal Marandi’s JVM and the Congress (the RJD).
“A big officer like Sahib is not used to acting servile. But Brahmins here expect candidates to beg for their vote and some of them may have decided in the JVM’s favor,” points out a local BJP functionary. In fact, Ram is dismissive of his rivals who, he says, tarnished the image of Palamu with crime and bribery. Instead, buoyed by the Modi factor, he is promising development without really explaining how it will be achieved.
Vikas defends his father again on this question: "We have plans for a thermal power plant. The land acquisition and environmental issues will have to be considered but let’s at least start thinking in that direction”.
As a former top cop, Ram is naturally a prime Maoist target. Does it worry him or the family? “It is certainly in the back of his mind, our minds,” Vikas pauses. "But one cannot compromise on campaigning after joining the fray.”
* * *
A few yards from a red flag fluttering on a lone campaign vehicle, Sushma Mehta is sitting by the road on a pile of bricks and scanning a newspaper outside her padlocked CPI(ML) Liberation office in Bishrampur, 40km from Daltonganj town. “Someone” is bringing the key. “We hired these two rooms only recently as our local campaign base. We need to organize this office,” Mehta says apologetically.
Slow moving SUVs blaring BJP campaign songs drown the CPI(ML) Liberation candidate’s voice every now and then as she narrates her story. On January 21, 2012, Mehta, then chairperson of the Garhwa District Council, and CPI(ML) Liberation state committee member Akhtar Ansari were on their way to join a roadblock organized by villagers over the location of a proposed health centre in Bhandaria.
In separate operations, the Maoists abducted Mehta and Ansari, along with their driver and security guard, and triggered a landmine blast killing 13 policemen who were accompanying the Block Development Officer to the protest site. The state police cracked down heavily on the CPI(ML) Liberation leadership and cadres alleging that the roadblock was organized to lure the cops into the Maoist’s trap.
The hostages were released on 24 January, the day when cops brutally lathi-charged a peaceful protest during a Garhwa bandh called by the CPI(ML) Liberation against state violence. Though the Maoists owned up to the blast, several CPI(ML) Liberation activists were detained and tortured.
“They [the Maoists] made us walk nonstop for three days. They hid us under bushes every time a chopper was heard overhead. I fell unconscious a number of times due to exhaustion. And on the day of the bandh, police officers trampled all over our state committee members [including Mehta’s husband Kalicharan], broke the bones of the elderly [including her father Kishor Kumar] and did not spare even women Panchayat members,” recalls an agitated Mehta.
Against such odds, the CPI(ML) Liberation base among the poor (primarily Dalits) is steadily expanding in Palamu. In the 2004 and 2007 Lok Sabha polls, the party bagged 16,837 and 18,413 votes respectively. In 2009, Mehta won more than 22,235 votes. But given the abject poverty and feudal practices still prevalent in the area, hasn’t the progress been slow? The BSP seems to command a much larger share (43,521 in 2009) of the Dalit vote here.
Mehta admits that unlike in Kodarma constituency, where the party moved up to the second spot from the third between 2004 and 2009, the organization has not been able to reach out to the poor from all sections in Palamu yet.
“A lot of money is at play here. We can’t and don’t want to go that way. Our budget for this election (campaigning) is only Rs 7 lakh. Anyway, mass mobilization hasn’t been easy as we are caught between the state and the Maoists,” she says. “But we are determined to give as long as it takes,” chips in Kalicharan, who has just joined the group waiting outside the office.
With somewhat rehearsed ease, Mehta breaks off to speak about the mineral riches of Jharkhand and its dismal resource management and arbitrary land acquisition policies. She points out how the abduction and liquor mafias operate with impunity in an atmosphere of fear created by the rebels.
“The Maoists are misled. But the police is no better. I am the most vulnerable candidate here and yet the administration wants me to apply for security cover. Even so, the protection is provided only up to 6pm; after that we are on our own,” she complains.
Kalicharan laughs. “What security? They arrested our Koderma candidate when he went to file nomination using an arrest warrant in a 2010 Panchayat election case.” Mehta shakes her head and calls to her companions if she can enter the office anytime soon.
The key has not been found yet.
* * *
No, Palamu’s political carousel is not meant for a casual read. Barring the Congress and the RJD sticking with each other, the only island of consistency in these treacherously fluid equations is the CPI(ML) Liberation, plowing a lonely furrow under fire from both cops and Naxals.
In 2004, Palamu sent Manoj Bhuiyan alias Manoj Kumar of the RJD to Parliament. Bhuiyan lost his Lok Sabha membership in the cash-for-query sting by a TV channel in 2005, but the RJD retained the seat in the 2007 bypoll with a new candidate, Ghuran Ram.
Ghuran Ram lost out to Baitha in 2009. He is contesting this time for the JVM, a party formed in 2006 by the state’s first chief minister and erstwhile BJP stalwart Babulal Marandi.
Meanwhile, snubbed by RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, Bhuiyan joined the JMM after a brief political hiatus to unsuccessfully contest the Chhatarpur Assembly seat that comes under the Palamu Lok Sabha segment in 2009. Five years on, Bhuiyan is back as Yadav’s chosen one for the Palamu seat.
At his Daltonganj home, Bhuiyan is surprisingly relaxed among his noisy followers itching to hit the road. It’s already 8.30 in the morning. But Bhuiyan calls for another round of tea. Then he waves off the Modi factor in Palamu. “What is this Gujarat model? No, that is not a challenge for me in Palamu.”
With the same poise he dismisses the cash-for-query sting. “They aired it 24x7 for 20 days or so. Go out and look for its impact here.” His opponent VD Ram the policeman? “He misused power. Our voters cannot be fooled.”
Why is Bhuiyan is so confident? “I got over 2 lakh votes here in 2004. Lalu Yadav’s promise of social justice resonates among the weaker sections of all communities.”
Anything at all Bhuiyan is wary of? The answer comes from a local Congress functionary. “There is a possibility that the JVM will split the Muslim vote. Also, a section of new voters – the jobless, frustrated youth – may buy the BJP’s lies about Modi. They may create a swing of sorts if they vote in large numbers,” he admits. “More so because half of Palamu’s voters don’t vote.”
The administration typically blames the low turnout on the atmosphere of fear perpetuated by the Naxalites. Palamu and Garhwa are among the 33 most vulnerable districts identified by the Union Home ministry. In 2009, the constituency recorded a turnout of just 46 percent.
Palamu district collector KN Jha has launched an impressive Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) drive to spread awareness among voters this time around. “We have taken out rallies, distributed posters, involved schools, community groups and All India Radio to encourage people to vote. The feedback has been good and we expect a better turnout,” he says.
While Maoists rarely target civilian poll workers, there are long queues at the Collectorate to seek exemption from election duties in sensitive areas. So far, no Naxalite poster calling for a boycott of the polls has been spotted. “We are deploying 16-24 security personnel in hypersensitive booths. We will station enough forces and micro observers to make the SC/ST voters feel secure,” Jha assures.
For now, the buzz is about Ram Navami celebrations beginning on April 8, two days ahead of the poll. The administration will be watching out for trouble while political parties will be looking to milk the festival. The BJP, in particular, expects the celebrations to trigger a mini swing in its favor. A JVM poll worker guffaws at the prospect, though. “There are enough Rams and Ravans already in the fray to bother about the mythical ones.”
YahooNews, 8 April, 2014
A laboratory for political experiments. That is how an exasperated Arjun Munda, former chief minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party, described Jharkhand last year. The state has seen nine governments and five chief ministers, one of them an independent MLA, since it was formed in November 2000. In these 13 years, politicians jumped parties and parties switched alliances as frequently and unabashedly as soldiers of fortune. Palamu, the Lok Sabha constituency that covers all of Garhwa district and a part of Palamu district, is no exception to Jharkhand’s politics of convenience.
Reserved for candidates from the scheduled castes, this erstwhile Congress bastion became a BJP stronghold during the saffron decade of the 1990s when the party registered four consecutive wins here. The formation of the state upset local equations. And very little has stayed constant since.
Take Baitha. Once a feared Maoist zonal commander who carried a reward of Rs 7 lakh on his head, Baitha was arrested in 2006 after a 26-year reign of terror. Charged in 51 cases of murder and violence in the neighboring districts of Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, he was released on bail only in 2011. He is India’s MP with the maximum number of criminal charges against him.
He contested the 2007 bypoll from jail on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket and came second, ahead of the BJP candidate. In 2009, Baitha returned as a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (National Democratic Alliance) candidate to defeat the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (United) candidates by a fair margin. And this year he is contesting from the TMC.
“I got only two and a half years to work for my people and I did as much as I could. I also asked 36 questions in Parliament,” Baitha claims before proceeding to read out a laundry list of achievements. “They (political opponents) say I have not done anything. What have they and their parties done in all these years?”
Baitha says he was “saved by god from getting sucked into communal politics” when the BJP refused him a ticket. What he isn’t saying is that even getting a Trinamool ticket was a big gamble. Dadai Dubey, Congress MLA from Bishrampur and till recently a minister in the Hemant Soren government, fell out with the party after openly criticizing it and joined the TMC as recently as early March. Dubey was Baitha’s emissary to Mamata Banerjeee.
“I got inspired by Mamata Banerjee. Her model of development weaned people away from Naxalism in Bengal. I want to fight Naxalism in Palamu the same way,” he says. He adds quickly that few know about the TMC in his constituency and that he, not the party, will be drawing the votes.
As the BSP candidate in 2007, he drew nearly one and a half lakh votes. (Before Baitha in 2004, the party managed 61,000 votes. In 2009, going against Baitha, the party got only 43,000 votes.) But not everyone shares Baitha’s confidence in his personal charms. Certainly, the sympathy wave generated by his wife Deomani Devi campaigning for her jailed husband in 2009 is missing this time.
And Baitha’s own aides say that the tacit Maoist support is missing too. “Baitha knew that security alone wouldn’t protect him. So he and his eldest son struck some deal to buy safety. But having lost his base, he is no more useful for the Maoists. Today, he won’t even win a ward election. He knows it himself and that’s why he has stopped spending money,” sniggers one of his campaign managers.
In a brief, dramatic speech on the Lokpal Bill in the Lok Sabha in 2011, Baitha had said that over 26 years he fought for the victims of feudalism who had no food or dignity. “In those years, it seemed corruption is in the villages. Now after coming to the big city, I hear in Parliament that Rs 68-75 lakh crore in black money is hidden abroad. Baap re baap! I though the robbers were in villages when the real dacoits are sitting here. That’s why Jharkhand is burning and the Maoist movement is gaining ground.”
At Baitha Niwas, he reiterates this anguish. “Jharkhand is rich in minerals but still our people are the poorest. It’s a conspiracy of the big capital and big politics. Our platform is separate. We [TMC] will emerge as the third largest party and form a third front,” he says, before tearing into Babulal Marandi’s “dangerous domicile policy”.
Asked if he is confident of a victory this time, Baitha fidgets. “Win or lose, what is important is reaching out to one’s people.” The next moment, he attempts a recovery. “People are weighing the alternatives. Will they vote for Manoj Bhuiyan who gave Palamu such a bad name for just one lakh rupees? Or for VD Ram whose in-laws in Daltanganj are his only local connection?”
Then Baitha flashes a fulsome smile. “I belong here. Pauhna se chor nahin marta (Can’t depend on a son-in-law to guard against thieves).”
* * *
A noise at the shuttered entrance of the hotel. The guard lifts the shutter to let in Palamu’s most talked about son-in-law returning from his 16-hour-plus daily campaign. VD Ram is so exhausted he can barely keep his eyes open. “I am really in no position to talk,” he mumbles as we start the discussion that was scheduled for 11.15pm.
When former Maoist zonal commander Kameshwar Baitha was behind bars in Bihar and Jharkhand, Vishnu Dayal Ram was Jharkhand’s Director-General of Police (DGP). He retired in 2011, the year Baitha was released on bail. He is now the BJP candidate from Palamu. Ram had to fight Baitha within the party as the latter was also eyeing a BJP ticket after the UPA (Congress-JMM-RJD) decided to field an RJD, and not a JMM, candidate from Palamu this time.
While many in the state see this as a face-off between the “symbols of a police state and a rebel militia”, Baitha refuses to get drawn into that debate.
Ram has reasons for campaigning like one possessed. None of the six Assembly segments – Bhawanathpur, Bishrampur, Daltonganj (Congress), Garhwa (Jharkhand Vikas Morcha), Hussainabad (RJD) and Chhatarpur (JD-U) – of the large Palamu parliamentary constituency is with the BJP.
A section of the local BJP is sympathetic to three-time-MP Braj Mohan Ram who was a strong contender for the ticket that went to Ram. Also, his brother-in-law Radha Krishna Kishore, then a JD(U) MLA, has already alienated a lot of voters in Chhatarpur by flaunting his powerful DGP jija-ji during 2004-2009.
Kishore, who came third in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls on a JD(U) ticket, won the Chhatarpur Assembly seat for the party in 2005. He tried his luck again at the Lok Sabha polls in 2009 for the JD(U), but performed dismally even with the BJP’s support. When the party refused him a ticket in the subsequent Assembly polls, he switched sides to contest from Chhatarpur on a Congress ticket and lost. This time around, he is campaigning for Ram.
Luckily, the decorated police officer has his supportive family. Ram’s elder son Vikas Anand took a break from his MNC job to be with his father, whom he calls a self-made man. “He was born in Ara (Bihar) but the only family we have is the one from our mother’s side here in Nai Mahalla (Daltonganj). My mother and sister are also here to look after him.” The younger son, a general manager with a cola giant, is missing in action, though.
Ram made news early in his career for his possible involvement in the Bhagalpur blinding case of 1980-81. It is the case on which the 2003 Ajay Devgn-starrer Gangajal was based (‘Gangajal’ being slang for the acid that several policemen poured into the eyes of under-trials). While the CBI interrogated Ram, he was not charged with any involvement.
Decades later, during his second tenure as DGP of Jharkhand, he was removed from office in 2010due to allegations of a dubious withdrawal of Rs 5.6 crore (some claim Rs 8 crore) from the Secret Service Fund. SS funds are supposed to be distributed among the district police chiefs for intelligence gathering for which no accounts are required to be maintained. Ram apparently withdrew sacks of cash and never transferred any to his SPs. In his affidavit to the court, he claimed to have distributed crores in cash directly among police informers at Ranchi’s Birsa Munda Stadium (Morabadi ground) one night in 2006.
Subsequently, the CBI refused to probe the case because it claimed to be “overburdened”. Incidentally, then-CBI chief AP Singh is a 1974 batch IPS officer and a year junior to Ram in the cadre. The reporter who broke the story for a national daily confided to me that Ram had repeatedly asked him not to go ahead with the report when the reporter asked him for his version.
Manning the BJP campaign headquarters in Daltonganj, elder son Vikas fields questions on his father’s behalf and dismisses the money allegations as a conspiracy. “When you are in important positions, you create enemies. We in the family know that my father had to dilute his fixed deposits to fund this campaign,” he claims.
Vikas also discounts the complaints that his father is a rank outsider. “Initially, maybe there was some resistance. But it helped that he has been here, reaching out to party functionaries and people for the last 8-9 months. Now this is an issue for his rivals only.”
Ram knows he has a close fight at hand with the RJD’s Manoj Bhuiyan this time. The BJP is eyeing Palamu’s upper caste votes while the RJD is targeting the Muslims. Of the backward castes, the Banias traditionally back the BJP and the Yadavs the RJD. Chunks of Dalit votes will go to the BSP and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. The BJP hopes that Ram’s Dalit identity will help them fight the RJD over the remaining votes. The Adivasis are said to have their loyalty divided primarily between former BJP leader Babulal Marandi’s JVM and the Congress (the RJD).
“A big officer like Sahib is not used to acting servile. But Brahmins here expect candidates to beg for their vote and some of them may have decided in the JVM’s favor,” points out a local BJP functionary. In fact, Ram is dismissive of his rivals who, he says, tarnished the image of Palamu with crime and bribery. Instead, buoyed by the Modi factor, he is promising development without really explaining how it will be achieved.
Vikas defends his father again on this question: "We have plans for a thermal power plant. The land acquisition and environmental issues will have to be considered but let’s at least start thinking in that direction”.
As a former top cop, Ram is naturally a prime Maoist target. Does it worry him or the family? “It is certainly in the back of his mind, our minds,” Vikas pauses. "But one cannot compromise on campaigning after joining the fray.”
* * *
A few yards from a red flag fluttering on a lone campaign vehicle, Sushma Mehta is sitting by the road on a pile of bricks and scanning a newspaper outside her padlocked CPI(ML) Liberation office in Bishrampur, 40km from Daltonganj town. “Someone” is bringing the key. “We hired these two rooms only recently as our local campaign base. We need to organize this office,” Mehta says apologetically.Slow moving SUVs blaring BJP campaign songs drown the CPI(ML) Liberation candidate’s voice every now and then as she narrates her story. On January 21, 2012, Mehta, then chairperson of the Garhwa District Council, and CPI(ML) Liberation state committee member Akhtar Ansari were on their way to join a roadblock organized by villagers over the location of a proposed health centre in Bhandaria.
In separate operations, the Maoists abducted Mehta and Ansari, along with their driver and security guard, and triggered a landmine blast killing 13 policemen who were accompanying the Block Development Officer to the protest site. The state police cracked down heavily on the CPI(ML) Liberation leadership and cadres alleging that the roadblock was organized to lure the cops into the Maoist’s trap.
The hostages were released on 24 January, the day when cops brutally lathi-charged a peaceful protest during a Garhwa bandh called by the CPI(ML) Liberation against state violence. Though the Maoists owned up to the blast, several CPI(ML) Liberation activists were detained and tortured.
“They [the Maoists] made us walk nonstop for three days. They hid us under bushes every time a chopper was heard overhead. I fell unconscious a number of times due to exhaustion. And on the day of the bandh, police officers trampled all over our state committee members [including Mehta’s husband Kalicharan], broke the bones of the elderly [including her father Kishor Kumar] and did not spare even women Panchayat members,” recalls an agitated Mehta.
Against such odds, the CPI(ML) Liberation base among the poor (primarily Dalits) is steadily expanding in Palamu. In the 2004 and 2007 Lok Sabha polls, the party bagged 16,837 and 18,413 votes respectively. In 2009, Mehta won more than 22,235 votes. But given the abject poverty and feudal practices still prevalent in the area, hasn’t the progress been slow? The BSP seems to command a much larger share (43,521 in 2009) of the Dalit vote here.
Mehta admits that unlike in Kodarma constituency, where the party moved up to the second spot from the third between 2004 and 2009, the organization has not been able to reach out to the poor from all sections in Palamu yet.
“A lot of money is at play here. We can’t and don’t want to go that way. Our budget for this election (campaigning) is only Rs 7 lakh. Anyway, mass mobilization hasn’t been easy as we are caught between the state and the Maoists,” she says. “But we are determined to give as long as it takes,” chips in Kalicharan, who has just joined the group waiting outside the office.
With somewhat rehearsed ease, Mehta breaks off to speak about the mineral riches of Jharkhand and its dismal resource management and arbitrary land acquisition policies. She points out how the abduction and liquor mafias operate with impunity in an atmosphere of fear created by the rebels.
“The Maoists are misled. But the police is no better. I am the most vulnerable candidate here and yet the administration wants me to apply for security cover. Even so, the protection is provided only up to 6pm; after that we are on our own,” she complains.
Kalicharan laughs. “What security? They arrested our Koderma candidate when he went to file nomination using an arrest warrant in a 2010 Panchayat election case.” Mehta shakes her head and calls to her companions if she can enter the office anytime soon.
The key has not been found yet.
* * *
No, Palamu’s political carousel is not meant for a casual read. Barring the Congress and the RJD sticking with each other, the only island of consistency in these treacherously fluid equations is the CPI(ML) Liberation, plowing a lonely furrow under fire from both cops and Naxals.
In 2004, Palamu sent Manoj Bhuiyan alias Manoj Kumar of the RJD to Parliament. Bhuiyan lost his Lok Sabha membership in the cash-for-query sting by a TV channel in 2005, but the RJD retained the seat in the 2007 bypoll with a new candidate, Ghuran Ram.
Ghuran Ram lost out to Baitha in 2009. He is contesting this time for the JVM, a party formed in 2006 by the state’s first chief minister and erstwhile BJP stalwart Babulal Marandi.
At his Daltonganj home, Bhuiyan is surprisingly relaxed among his noisy followers itching to hit the road. It’s already 8.30 in the morning. But Bhuiyan calls for another round of tea. Then he waves off the Modi factor in Palamu. “What is this Gujarat model? No, that is not a challenge for me in Palamu.”
With the same poise he dismisses the cash-for-query sting. “They aired it 24x7 for 20 days or so. Go out and look for its impact here.” His opponent VD Ram the policeman? “He misused power. Our voters cannot be fooled.”
Why is Bhuiyan is so confident? “I got over 2 lakh votes here in 2004. Lalu Yadav’s promise of social justice resonates among the weaker sections of all communities.”
Anything at all Bhuiyan is wary of? The answer comes from a local Congress functionary. “There is a possibility that the JVM will split the Muslim vote. Also, a section of new voters – the jobless, frustrated youth – may buy the BJP’s lies about Modi. They may create a swing of sorts if they vote in large numbers,” he admits. “More so because half of Palamu’s voters don’t vote.”
The administration typically blames the low turnout on the atmosphere of fear perpetuated by the Naxalites. Palamu and Garhwa are among the 33 most vulnerable districts identified by the Union Home ministry. In 2009, the constituency recorded a turnout of just 46 percent.
While Maoists rarely target civilian poll workers, there are long queues at the Collectorate to seek exemption from election duties in sensitive areas. So far, no Naxalite poster calling for a boycott of the polls has been spotted. “We are deploying 16-24 security personnel in hypersensitive booths. We will station enough forces and micro observers to make the SC/ST voters feel secure,” Jha assures.
For now, the buzz is about Ram Navami celebrations beginning on April 8, two days ahead of the poll. The administration will be watching out for trouble while political parties will be looking to milk the festival. The BJP, in particular, expects the celebrations to trigger a mini swing in its favor. A JVM poll worker guffaws at the prospect, though. “There are enough Rams and Ravans already in the fray to bother about the mythical ones.”
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