Voter Adhikar Yatra hits the ground running

Four days before the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ started from Sasaram on 17 August, Tejashwi Yadav pointed out an anomaly. Bhikhubhai Dalsania, a senior BJP functionary from Gujarat, was registered as a voter in Bihar, his name printed in Gujarati in the electoral rolls, with no address or house number alongside.

Thing is, he was also registered as a voter in his home state, and had voted in home minister Amit Shah’s constituency in last year’s Lok Sabha election.

Before this year’s Assembly election in Bihar, Dalsania was given an organisational post in the state and registered as a voter here. As Yadav put it, next year he may well become a registered voter in Assam. In fact, who knew how many states had benefited from his presence over the past five years?

Indignant BJP supporters were quick to defend Dalsania. An Indian citizen can, they said, settle anywhere and register as a voter. Never mind the small detail of missing house numbers, and the inconvenient dictum of ‘one man, one vote’. The ‘vote chori’ message has stuck, though, with many en route the yatra claiming their names have been deleted from the voter list.

The response to the yatra — which is scheduled to wind its way across 23 districts in the state, over 16 days, covering approximately 1,300 km — has been spontaneous and overwhelming. Crowds of ordinary people are braving the heat and heavy rain to join in, disregarding the treacherous slush on narrow, muddy roads.

Waving flags of the principal opposition parties — the Congress, the RJD and the CPI-ML (Liberation) — they are lustily raising the slogan ‘Vote chor, gaddi chhor’, first coined by CPI-ML national general-secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya. “As you can see, these people were not bussed in!”, an effusive member of the yatra organising team told this correspondent.

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The sowing season has just come to an end in Bihar, and with much of the state flooded, farmers and agricultural workers have both time and good reason to listen to speeches. In Gaya, Sanjay Kumar told newsmen, “Yeh Rahul Gandhi ki ladai nahin, hamari jung hai (this isn’t Rahul Gandhi’s fight, it’s our battle)."

The deletion of names — reportedly mostly Dalits and minorities — after the Election Commission’s hastily and shoddily conducted ‘special intensive revision’ (SIR) of electoral rolls has stoked very real fears for the future. “Naam hat gaya toh kutta bhi nahin poochhega (if our names are deleted, even the dogs won’t give a damn),” said Sanjay. Today, the right to vote, tomorrow the right to rations, healthcare, jobs, welfare benefits — everything could be snatched away.

The yatra’s timing is as deliberate as the route, winding through villages and hamlets rather than urban areas. Choosing Sasaram as the starting point was both symbolic and pragmatic. Sasaram was former deputy prime minister and Dalit icon Jagjivan Ram’s home turf. It is also where Sher Shah Suri’s tomb is located, a few kilometres from the Grand Trunk Road built by that able and just commander.

YouTuber Bharat Suraj believes it’s still early days to predict if the yatra will be a gamechanger in the election, but it certainly has made ‘vote chori’ an effective rallying cry.

BJP leaders and mainstream media have dismissed the yatra as a circus. Crowds gather even when a monkey passes through a village, they scoff. Off the record, they acknowledge they’re underplaying the impact for political reasons.

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A BJP leader conceded, on condition of anonymity, that “contrary to the labels of ‘simpleton’ and ‘royal pappu’ we’ve tried to stick on Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav, the people see them as assertive, combative leaders who are talking about bread-and-butter issues.” As far as popularity ratings go, they are giving Narendra Modi a run for his money.

Activist Brajnandan Pathak is impressed by the ease with which the yatra has taken in its stride sporadic protests and black-flag demonstrations organised by NDA supporters. Friends and ‘foes’ alike are being met with Rahul Gandhi’s broad smile and trademark flying kisses.

Retired IPS officer M.A. Kazmi believes that ridiculing the yatra has been a bad move. Better they had ignored it, as they usually do. Instead, the BJP has deployed its star spokespersons — Sambit Patra, Ajay Alok and Syed Shahnawaz Hussain — to take potshots at Rahul and belittle what is clearly growing into a movement.

Alok and Hussain were even directed to visit district headquarters to find a way to counter the ‘vote chor, gaddi chhor’ campaign. Defending the SIR is proving as difficult as reversing the perception that the ECI and the BJP are working in tandem.

Bihar’s deputy chief minister Vijay Sinha unwittingly strengthened this impression by saying that the ECI rejected his plea to delete his name from one of the two constituencies where he has been listed.

Another thing that has struck people is the respect that Rahul and Tejashwi have been showing each other. There is no attempt to hog the limelight. That Tejashwi Yadav and Dipankar Bhattacharya are walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Rahul Gandhi, not simply making symbolic appearances, has also not gone unnoticed.

While Rahul Gandhi addresses the crowd on the Constitution, SIR and the significance of their vote, Tejashwi Yadav speaks on the betrayal of Bihar over nearly 20 years of NDA rule. They complement each other well.

Rahul Gandhi’s decision to spend the night in his container and not in hotels or the homes of regional Congress leaders has also gone down well with party workers. He actively discourages people from calling him ‘Jan Nayak’. His informality, as he invites villagers to ride with him and share experiences directly into the microphone, and the way he rushed to help a police constable injured on duty have endeared him further.

Another notable incident involved the late Dashrath Manjhi, the ‘mountain man of Bihar’ who singlehandedly built a road through a hill. (His story inspired the film by Ketan Mehta with Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the lead role.)

Dashrath passed away without a home of his own, despite promises by several leaders, including Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. On 18 August, without any fanfare, Rahul Gandhi handed the keys of a newly constructed house to the mountain man’s surviving son Bhagirath Manjhi, in his father’s honour.

And so, with miles to go and promises to keep, the yatra continues, fuelled by energy and hope, before it concludes on 1 September at Patna’s historic Gandhi Maidan.