The Godmothers of Bihar


Bees saal dekh liye fair ko, ab lovely ko dekh lijiye. (You’ve seen ‘fair’ for 20 years, have a look at ‘lovely’ now),” shouts a young Congress party worker into the mike and looks behind for appreciation, grinning at with his own pun. Equally happy is Lovely Anand, Congress candidate for the Allam Nagar constituency, who’s on the dais today in Chausa. The dark sunglasses don’t hide her beaming face. The crowd’s attention, however, is on the sunny sky, from where Bhojpuri matinee idol Ravi Kishen is expected to descend in a helicopter.

In 2007, a lower court sentenced Anand to life for inciting the crowd to lynch G. Krishnaiah, the Gopalganj district magistrate, at gangster Chotan Shukla’s funeral procession. She got bail from the Patna High Court. But her husband, former MP Anand Mohan Singh, is serving a life sentence in Saharsa jail for the case.

In the 1990s, Singh headed a private army which attacked supporters of reservation for the backward castes. His army went unchallenged - till Ranjan Yadav, more notorious as Pappu Yadav, emerged on the scene. It set up a clash of criminal titans and threw north Bihar’s Kosi belt into a civil war. “They clashed often in pitched battles and we reported diligently,” recalls a senior journalist who requests anonymity. They threatened and killed at will. They were Kosi’s terror twins.

Singh’s wife Anand spins her own tale: “He was not a criminal or a don. He’s a victim of a political conspiracy. He was a big fan of Bhagat Singh and Nelson Mandela - and always challenged the political establishment since he was 17.” It sounds like a rehearsed stance, and suppressed smile a giveaway of the version’s absurdness. The posters in Chausa has Anand saying: ‘Kisi ke liye ye matdaan hai; mere liye jeevan-daan hai’ (To some this is an election; for me this is a grant of life). Singh’s mother, too, features on the poster. It’s a desperate plea from the once-dreaded family.


Same coin, other side

It’s a similar story for Singh’s foe Pappu Yadav, who is also serving life in Beur jail. His wife Ranjit Ranjan is Congress’s ‘star contestant’ for the Bihariganj seat.

Ranjan’s was a Kashmiri Pandit family which converted to Sikhism. She represented Bihar in tennis while Pappu had made a name as Lalu Prasad Yadav’s henchman. “A lumpen youngster who had made himself notorious in the Saharsa-Purnea region with acts of wanton violence… He had the physique of a baby elephant and the reputation of a raving, stampeding one,” writes Sankarshan Thakur in Subaltern Saheb: Bihar and the making of Laloo Yadav.

How did she get married to a don? “Those days I used to go on a Hero Majestic cycle for practice at the New Patna Club, where he had seen me. He came home to propose, but my family took its time deciding. It went on for two years… He never misbehaved with me. I judged his character as a woman,” says Ranjan. Stories about how Yadav won over her brother first by gifting him a cricket kit are part of the lore. Wagging tongues also say that her family didn’t have much of a choice, though the wedding was performed according to the Sikh tradition.

Today, she’s the face of Pappu’s empire and wields influence in his name. Between them, the two powerful ‘godmothers’ managed six Congress tickets for their acolytes. But everyone is clear where their power flows from: their posters invariably have their husbands’ faces in the same size. And both of them seek “people’s justice” for their jailed husbands.

Once in rival camps, they were recently spotted on the same dais with Rahul Gandhi. They seem not to share the animosity of their husbands. “She is like sister to me,” says Ranjan.

People of flood-prone Kosi belt are using an apt metaphor for this duo of foes-turned-friends: “During the floods even the snake and the man will travel in the same boat.” But one knows how things may turn once the water recedes.

Courtsey HT

PESA push for BJP but at Sadans’ cost
October 24, 2010

VIJAY DEO JHA /VINOD PRASAD | RANCHI / LOHARDAGA

The restive lungs in the BJP will have a sure cause to grab credit in coming days if Panchayat elections are conducted under PESA Act, but at this immediate point it is merely whispering in fear about the degree of collateral damage which is built in the framework of this election.

This collateral damage is widely predicted in the form of simmering anger of Sadans (non-tribal) against the BJP and the core constituents of the party who are not happy with the reservation policy opted under PESA. Even party insiders termed it a matter of great concern since Sadans accounts around 70 per cent of the total population of Jharkhand.

“Irrespective of a party in the government; the state government is duty bound to conduct election under Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Area Act (PESA) following the order of the Supreme Court. It is not a political decision,” a senior party leader in Ranchi said.

Two immediate micro level developments in the past four days went unreported. Around 100 Sadans in Lohardaga district have taken pledge to turn heat upon BJP and party Chief Minister Arjun Munda in the electoral field. The call for this boomed from one of the Muslim dominated villages; Narinawadih under Kisko block.

“We will campaign against Munda for his anti-Sadan stand in the constituency he chooses to fight anywhere in Jharkhand. The legitimate political and constitutional rights of Sadans have been ignored in the framework of Panchayat election,” Kuddus Ansari of Sadan Vikash Parishad. The Parishad has still to emerge as a collective and dominant force to rattle the BJP and Munda.

The second is definitely not the music for the BJP. Party office bearers of Varno block under Gumla district resigned in block from the party post to protest elections under Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Area Act (PESA) which they pleaded as subversive to the interest of Sadans.

Before and after Panchayat elections scheduled were announced the party office this week, has filled with cascade of complaints, suggestions and the damage the party may suffer if due steps are not taken to placate Sadans.

These are attached with due references of dismal election results of party in Sadan dominated areas like Lohardaga, Gumla and others in the past assembly polls. State party seniors will probably sit on coming Tuesday to take on this critical issue and panchayat elections as well.

“A meeting has specially been called on Tuesday in Ranchi to discuss Panchayat polls in Jharkhand and the strategy of the party therein.” Newly appointed state BJP president Dineshananda Goswami said equally attempting to downplay the Verno episode ever mirrors dominant feeling of Sadan party workers.

“As party workers we are supporting Panchayat elections even after majority of seats have been kept reserved for the tribal population even those with zero tribal population. There is no effort; political or otherwise; and Sadans are getting alienated from the BJP,” a senior BJP leader in Lohardaga said. Similar sentiment was echoed by one Gumla BJP leader who said that the complaints of Sadan will get more deep-seated after elections. The Congress is secretly laughing over BJP’s stutter. The Congress has started a whispering campaign against BJP among Sadans. “Which way to counter it we do not know,” a party leader said.