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Patna,(BiharTimes): Though the first round of assembly election in Bihar is just over a week from now the campaign is yet to pick up full speed in the state. None of the top leader like Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Lal Krishna Advani, Nitin Gadkari etc has visited the state yet. In fact Gadkari had to cancel his visit at the last moment following crisis in Karnataka.
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Some Union ministers belonging to the Congress party have turned up to address public meetings. Rahul did visit the state on September 4, but that was a couple of days before the announcement of election date by the Election Commission. Even the media is not giving so much coverage to the election in Bihar. Perhaps they are too much confined to the Commonwealth Games and revolt in the Karnataka BJP.
Till now only the regional satraps like Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan, Sushil Kumar Modi etc are campaigning. The two constituents of the National Democratic Alliance have got embroiled in the controversy as to who will campaign and who not. After the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, and Varun Gandhi, the Bihar chief minister now has reservation in sharing dais even with Advani and Ravi Shankar Prasad for their role in the Babri Masjid case.
Unlike the past elections this one is yet to generate much heat. The festival season is also coming in the way of generating enthusiasm.
The irony is that there is general lack of interest among the voters when the workers of different parties, especially BJP, Janata Dal (United) and Congress are publicly clashing over the distribution of tickets.
The special feature of the 20-year long duration between 1989 and 2009 is that there was very strong political polarization in the state. The people were either pro- or anti-Lalu. Before that period there were no such two poles in the state politics, barring of course in post-Emergency parliamentary and assembly elections in 1977.
What is strange is that till 2009 there were strong political polarization. But, several measures taken by the Nitish Kumar government certainly alienated and antagonized a large section of the strong upper castes. It was this indifference in this section of the society which has its impact on the election campaign.
The anti-Lalu passion, at least in this influential section, is not as strong as it was till a few months back. A section of the society has become disillusioned and they see no hope in the alternative to Lalu too. This very section has till a year back been trumpeting that Bihar has made a lot of progress. Now a year later they refuse to accept development as an election slogan. They are the ones who are asking the definition of the term development and asking uncomfortable questions from the government about rampant corruption. This section may not cross over and give votes to the RJD. They may certainly sit down and vote none. This is why there is general lack of zeal in this assembly election.
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