NEWS
ANALYSIS
SPECIALS
INTERVIEW
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ISSUES
GALLERY
MANIFESTOS
OVERHEARD
INDIA SPEAKS!
DISCUSSION GROUP
CHAT
PREVIOUS RESULTS

SCHEDULE

Why the RJD-JD pact collapsed

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

The Communist Party of India failed to open its account in the 1998 parliamentary election when it went it alone in Bihar. It ended runners-up in only two seats, though contested 15. In contrast, it won all the eight seats it fought in alliance with the then Janata Dal in 1991.

In 1996 again, as an electoral partner of the then Janata Dal, it won four out of the eight seats that it put up candidates. Yet on Monday the party snapped ties with the RJD, despite being offered three seats to it this time.

Though the RJD supremo had not reacted till Tuesday afternoon, left-watchers feel the CPI may have committed electoral suicide. But there's the argument that harakiri is better than the ignominy of defeat.

Considering it won just 3.40 per cent of votes the last time, the oldest communist party in the country is certainly threatened with extinction in the state. In the 1967 and 1971 parliamentary elections, this same party had polled 9.9 per cent of the votes and won five out of 17 seats both times. And that, without leaning on any other political party. During the 1969 assembly election its percentage of votes even rose to 10.1.

However, in the post-Emergency era the percentage dipped but the party soon regained some ground.

But the advent of Laloo Prasad Yadav on March 10, 1990, and the Mandal Commission report on August 7 that year changed politics in the state.

Gauging the mood of the masses, the CPI decided to make it a policy to support the implementation of the Mandal report, getting into an alliance with the then undivided Janata Dal in the 1991 parliamentary polls. It bagged all the eight seats the Janata Dal left them, securing 7.6 per cent votes. Once again it emerged as a major player in the state politics.

But in 1996, it managed just four of those seats, garnering six per cent of the total votes. The Janata Dal too suffered, winning only 22 seats instead of the 31 it had earlier.

Since that election came just four months after the animal husbandry scam in Bihar, after the election, the CPI decided it was best to leave the Laloo bandwagon after the poor showing. Within a couple of months it made a U-turn and started a campaign against what it alleged was a corrupt chief minister.

Trouble was already brewing between the poll partners. The CPI was already resentful of Laloo Yadav's interference in party affairs. For, during the 1996 elections, he had prevailed upon the party leadership to replace its candidate from Madhubani, Bhogendra Jha, considered a seasoned and respectable leader. The replacement, another senior candidate, Chaturanan Mishra, won and became the Union agriculture minister in the United Front government. But the interference still annoyed the CPI.

But when the probe into the animal husbandry scam probe failed to make any headway and Laloo Yadav got bail from Supreme Court, both in 1997 and 1998, the CPI forgot its differences. It decided that it would not antagonise a party that had secured 33.21 percentage of votes in 1998 as against 31.80 in 1996.

Besides, by fighting alone the CPI had managed just 3.40 per cent of the votes, the lowest it has managed since 1957. The spat with Laloo Yadav cost the party dearly -- since six out of its 26 MLAs quit to form a separate Krantikari Communist Party. All the MLAs, who were from the backward castes, declared in a press conference that the CPI was dancing to the tune of a handful of upper caste feudals who just did not want to see the rise of Laloo Yadav.

But when the Vajpayee government at the Centre fell, the CPI and RJD came together again. Laloo Yadav too realised that though the percentage of votes his party was getting hadn't declined, the number of seats had, owing to a division of votes. The combined power of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samata Party has him worried, but he wants to put the CPI in its place too.

But there is a motive beyond revenge in his decision not to overindulge the CPI. A couple of seats that the CPI has demanded this time had been in 1998 by the RJD or its ally, the Congress. Madhubani was won by Dr Shakeel Ahmed of the Congress and Ballia (the one in Bihar) by Rajbanshi Mahto of the RJD.

"How can we give these two seats to the CPI? It should at least pay the price for deserting us last time," said Prof Ram Bachan Rai, the RJD's state general secretary.

But the CPI leaders say it will have a hard time winning from the three seats they've been given, Hazaribagh, Nalanda and Godda. While Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha is the BJP's nominee from Hazaribagh, George Fernandes is defending Nalanda for the Janata Dal-United. So the CPI has hopes only in Godda.

The CPI is also upset that the RJD gave two seats to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which has never won more than one seat from the state. In 1998, the CPI-M too had fought separately, the party got just 0.4 per cent of the votes.

What has the CPI really worried is that the number of votes may continue to plummet to the point that the Election Commission will derecognise it as a national party.

Tell us what you think of this interview