Rahul’s ‘vote chori’ pitch vs Modi’s old playbook

UTTAR PRADESH has a history of turning a state election into a referendum on the state of the nation, based on the adage that whoever wins UP will get the ‘gaddi’ in Delhi (in the Lok Sabha election).

The saying is a quasi-myth because India has had a few PMs from outside UP; therefore, any party cannot be the rightful claimant to the throne merely by virtue of sending 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. But the UP politicians believe that the supreme crown is theirs. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his Lok Sabha debut from Varanasi as well as Vadodara in Gujarat, home to him. After winning both, it was no surprise that he chose Varanasi.

The next UP election is far , in 2027, so there is time to speculate and debate on who will become the Lucknow sovereign and if the pedestal can transport him to Delhi in 2029.

Meanwhile, Bihar — often spoken in the same breath as UP as a premier heartland province although after its bifurcation, its parliamentary representation is down to 40 — votes in two months and has evoked the same degree of enthusiasm as UP among the political class.

An election being fought for Bihar's sweepstakes between two regional leaders has rapidly transformed into a national duel between Modi and Rahul Gandhi, who incidentally made his first serious foray in the state.

What ought to have been a straight contest between Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) scion Tejashwi Yadav and Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar — with the backing of the Congress and BJP respectively — is a confrontation between the PM and the Opposition leader in the Lok Sabha, who has apparently staked the destiny of the INDIA bloc in an election full of uncertainties.

Indeed, on August 27, in a rally at Muzaffarpur, Rahul invited DMK leader and Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin and his MP Kanimozhi to speak and ostensibly accentuate the national flavour of his campaign.

However, in an X post, Stalin, himself a weighty regional satrap, acknowledged RJD founder and patriarch Lalu Prasad's primacy in Bihar without losing sight of the day's issue. "Touchdown Bihar. The land of respected Lalu Prasad ji greets me with fire in its eyes, the soil heavy with every stolen vote."

Rahul spearheaded his 1,300-km 'Voter Adhikar' yatra across the state with a single-point agenda: votes were "stolen" by the BJP/NDA with the Election Commission's (EC) alleged complicity in recent elections.

Congress Booth Level Agents flagged a staggering 89 lakh complaints of irregularities, especially the arbitrary inclusion and deletion of voters' names, allegedly to gerrymander outcomes in the NDA-unfriendly constituencies.

Rahul emphasised the issue in his campaign, covering over 100 Assembly seats to such an extent that there was no mention of the Nitish-led BJP-JD(U) coalition government's acts of omission and commission that Tejashwi and the RJD highlighted in other forums.

It was as though the EC was the prime villain of Rahul's show and not the incumbent dispensation. Nitish has been the CM in every government that has ruled Bihar in the past 20 years (barring a short period in 2014-15).

Although Rahul had Tejashwi by his side, he did not say a word about projecting him as the Opposition's "Mahagatbandhan" (MGB) CM candidate. The RJD has already declared Lalu's scion as one.

Will "vote chori" (vote theft) click in a state with a history of epic anti-establishment (read anti-Congress) movements rooted in its soil? Recall that the seeds of the uprising against the Emergency were sown in Bihar that created a legend in Jayaprakash Narayan.

The first concerted revolt against the upper caste hegemony perpetuated in a long list of Brahmin, Bhumihar, Rajput and Kayastha Congress CMs who governed Bihar (Bhola Paswan Shastri, a Dalit, was an exception though he did not complete his tenure) fructified in Bihar when Lalu Prasad, Nitish and Ram Vilas Paswan burst on the scene in the aftermath of VP Singh's decision to implement the Mandal Commission's proposals.

The recommendations set aside 27 per cent reservation in government educational institutions and jobs for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Lalu and Nitish were OBCs from different sub-castes while Paswan was a Dalit.

By then, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi had played ducks and drakes with their CMs and destabilised the Congress, that never returned to power in Bihar after 1990 and was forced to cling to the RJD's hands for survival. Perhaps, the moribund Congress looks at the "yatra" as one granting it a new lease of life. But "vote chori" cannot exist as a slogan.

To translate into something more substantive and touch voters, more work is required on the ground to detect those who were disenfranchised or are in danger of being disenfranchised for no fault of theirs. Missing names have to be identified and followed up. The processes are arduous and long-drawn and time is not on Rahul's side.

Which is why when the "yatra" culminated in a rally in Patna — overwhelmed by Rahul's posters — Tejashwi themed his address on the Bihar government, whose "double engine", he remarked, pulled in two directions: one towards "corruption" and the other towards "criminalisation". These are planks that the BJP-JD(U) has consistently used against the RJD.

Modi used the familiar tropes in his campaign speeches. He revels in playing the victim and this time he used the "abuses" hurled on his late mother, Heeraben, by an alleged Congress worker at a rally in Darbhanga, where Rahul and Tejashwi were not present.

For Modi and the BJP, it was a rerun of the "maut ka saudagar", "naali ka keeda" and "chaiwaala" moments. These were the derogatory phrases used by Congress leaders against the PM during elections and the BJP squeezed them dry to invoke sympathy for its leader.

Modi said Bihar was the land of Sita and the honour of mothers was, therefore, supreme. The state BJP called a bandh to protest the invectives, forcing the Congress to distance itself from the episode.

Modi, Tejashwi and Nitish have earned their spurs in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. Rahul awaits his first major test on untested territory and that's no mean task, with or without the RJD.

Radhika Ramaseshan is a senior journalist based in New Delhi, India.