Shivani Shukla, 28, got the RJD ticket an hour before the nominations for the Bihar Assembly Elections closed.
Shukla is one of the three women candidates RJD fielded from this region.
The rally is one of the last for the polling on November 6, as campaigning will have to stop from today onwards, as per the ECI’s rules.
As you enter Lalganj in Vaishali district, you hear the pleas on loudspeakers to vote for the daughter of the place who will bring back the glory to the area. Shivani Shukla, 28, got the RJD ticket an hour before the nominations for the Bihar Assembly Elections closed. Shukla is one of the three women candidates RJD fielded from this region. She calls herself an accidental politician and speaks freely about her father, the Bahubali Munna Shukla, who once held the seat in this area.
At the rally in nearby Hajipur, she says that she wants the blessings of the people here and wants to represent the issues that the youth face in this region. She also says that she is contesting from the nearby constituency and that she is the daughter of the region. The crown cheers her on and says she is cleared from their side.
The rally is one of the last for the polling on November 6, as campaigning will have to stop from today onwards, as per the ECI’s rules. Mahagathbandhan’s CM candidate for the Bihar Assembly Election, Tejashwi Yadav, is here to promote Dev Prasad Chaurasia. In the evening, at 5 pm, in Hajipur, where people have been waiting for hours to see Mahagatbhandan’s CM candidate Tejashwi Yadav. But at ten minutes to five, Tejashwi’s helicopter flies above, and the crowd starts to shout. All campaigning will stop in the constituencies that are scheduled for polling in the first phase on November 6. On stage, by now at least 20 people have spoken about everything about their politics on the stage, appealing to the people to vote for the Mahagatbandhan candidates here.
The pitch is made here to woo the Extremely Backward Castes (EBC), Scheduled Caste (SC), and Scheduled Tribe (ST), and speakers remind the people of what they call the humiliation suffered by them when reservations for them are being threatened.
Caste has always been the major electoral issue in Bihar, where caste mobilisation movements have always been there to counter the supremacy of the upper castes. While many candidates like Shivani Shukla say that she wishes caste would go away, it looks unlikely that the identity issues that are based on caste loyalties and affiliations are going to go away soon, especially after the caste census of 2023 has outlined clearly the matters of representation from various castes and their status.
Munna Shukla is currently lodged in the Bhagalpur Jail with regard to a murder case of a former minister here.
But his sway over the place remains. Like Mohammad Shahabuddin, who died in jail in 2021 but is still relevant in Siwan’s politics.
But unlike Osama Shahab, who is contesting on a RJD ticket from Raghunathpur in Siwan and is the son of Shahabuddin, Shivani Shukla speaks at rallies and with the media.
Like the Mahagathbandhan, the NDA has also fielded criminal-politicians and their relatives, including spouses and children.
The recent murder case of a former aide of Lalu Prasad Yadav of the RJD, Dularchand Yadav, in Mokama has again exposed the hypocrisy around the term Jungle Raj, which has become the BJP’s narrative here in Bihar. Sanjay Singh, the BJP candidate from Lalganj, has been using the Jungle Raj story during Lalu’s time in his poll campaign, like many candidates from the NDA. But crime statistics show otherwise. JD(U)’s Anant Singh has been taken into judicial custody by the police with regard to the murder in Mokama. Anant Singh has held the Mokama seat for four terms and is contesting this time on a JD(U) ticket and is pitched against the wife of another Bahubali Suraj Bhan Singh, who was also a parliamentarian, amongst other candidates from other political parties.
