When RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav voted on Tuesday morning in the Digha constituency in the second phase of the Bihar Assembly election, his vote went to CPI(ML) candidate Shashi Yadav.
Hours later and some 150 km away, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya addressed a public meeting in Keoti constituency in Darbhanga for senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui.
Weeks ahead at a door-to-door meeting conducted by CPI(ML) candidate Mehboob Alam for the Balrampur Assembly seat in Katihar, slogans hailing Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav, Rahul and Sonia Gandhi were raised.
In the Paliganj Assembly seat, which went to the polls in the first phase, Mr. Tejashwi directly reached out to CPI(ML) candidate Sandeep Saurav and later addressed a public rally seeking votes for him.
These are snippets from the Bihar Assembly elections 2020 where the allies of the RJD-led Mahagatbandhan (grand alliance) are working in perfect synergy in contrast to the NDA alliance, where the BJP and the JD(U) seem to be running individual campaigns parallel to each other. BJP State president Sanjay Jaiswal recently publicly rued the lack of coordination between the NDA allies. Even in the few joint rallies that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have held, the Prime Minister has skipped mentioning Mr. Kumar’s work.
The party leaders claim that the cadres of all the five parties — the RJD, the Congress, the CPI (ML), the CPI and the CPI (M) — have come together organically without directions from the top. “There is perfect synergy, coordination and coherent strategy between the RJD-Congress and the Left parties. We haven’t received any complaints in the 243 constituencies other than one or two for minor local issues,” senior RJD leader Manoj K. Jha.
Barring the initial meetings in Patna among the allies17, most of the coordination, he said, was being done at the constituency level.
All the campaign material carries pictures of leaders of the five parties.
CPI (ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said the common manifesto too did not require much brainstorming, since it was a compilation of the popular demands.
