Patna, In politically volatile Bihar, where the BJP got the opportunity to head a government only recently, Bankipur is among the few assembly seats which the party has been winning, always with emphatic margins, for decades.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, when fifth-term Bankipur MLA Nitin Nabin got elected to the Rajya Sabha, after being catapulted to the post of BJP national president, the party, especially the state unit which has been basking in the glory, saw the ensuing bypoll, scheduled on July 30, as a cakewalk.
The party's aplomb could be gauged from the fact that in a seat that it can ill afford to lose, the BJP has fielded a low-key youth wing leader Neeraj Kumar Sinha, whom other contenders would have looked down upon as the proverbial lightweight, but for the formidable machinery that backs him.
The sanguinity in the BJP camp faces the main challenge from Prashant Kishor, who has thrown his hat in the ring in a desperate attempt to infuse fresh vigour into his Jan Suraaj Party, which drew a blank in the assembly polls held in November last year.
"The four lakh voters of Bankipur will not be electing just one MLA. If I win, Samrat Choudhary will be compelled to step down as the chief minister. Inside the House, the Jan Suraaj Party's lone MLA shall carry a weight that would exceed the combined heft of the remaining 242 ones", has been a common refrain of Kishor.
The 49-year-old, who in his previous avatar as a poll strategist had offered services to leaders as diverse as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, had refrained from contesting the assembly polls, a decision that is said to have left voters of Bihar disenchanted with his promise of "political alternative".
While campaigning in Bankipur, he has been trying to convince voters that the by-election is a "referendum on the BJP-led government in Bihar", with clever attempts at exploiting the state's political fault-lines.
"Those who had voted for the BJP out of fear that a victory for the RJD will bring 'jungle raj' back to Bihar can now rest assured as the NDA enjoys a brute majority in the assembly and a victory for Jan Suraaj Party will not lead to a change in government," he said.
On the other hand, he appeals to Muslims saying, "You had been voting for the RJD only with the hope that the BJP would be kept at bay. That has not happened. So vote for a change this time by supporting Jan Suraaj Party."
"I know that most people here are not happy with Samrat Choudhary. But you cannot say this to Modi or Union Home Minister Amit Shah upfront. So, vote for me and the message will get conveyed to them", has been another tongue-in-cheek observation of the I-PAC founder.
Incidentally, Choudhary, who joined the BJP less than a decade ago and is understood to have been handpicked by the top leadership because of caste arithmetic, has been under attack from Kishor since assembly elections, when the latter repeatedly highlighted discrepancies in dates of birth and educational qualifications stated by the former in poll affidavits submitted at different times.
Choudhary, who had started off as a minister in the RJD government headed by Rabri Devi, has also been called by Kishor "a representative of jungle raj" with alleged criminal antecedents.
By targeting the BJP government over issues like Bharat Tiwari encounter case of Bhojpur and the recent murder of Patna resident Bunty Yadav, Kishor hopes to strike a chord with various sections of an electorate known for voting along caste lines.
However, the BJP appears to be thinking on its toes. Sinha became the candidate after Abhishek Kumar 'Bunty' pulled out citing "family reasons", a day after filing nomination papers. It is understood that Bunty took the step following a belated realisation by the BJP leadership that the fact of his parents having been named in the fodder scam could be taken advantage of by the wily Kishor.
"The party has reposed its trust in me and I promise to live up to expectations. I seek the blessings of the electors of Bankipur who have been voting for my party for years", has been the appeal of Neeraj Kumar Sinha, who appears dazed upon finding himself, suddenly, under limelight.
Sinha, like Nabin, is a Kayastha, an upper caste group that is numerically small across the state but has a high concentration in the predominantly urban, nearly four lakh voters strong, Bankipur.
In an apparent war of attrition, many persons who had contested assembly polls on tickets of Jan Suraaj Party, have recently joined the BJP.
Kishor, whose party had inducted many renowned personalities from all walks of life in the run up to assembly polls, can now bank upon solely his personal charisma.
In contrast, the BJP's less fancied candidate is backed by an impressive arsenal that includes Nabin, who on every visit to his hometown reminds the people that despite being in Rajya Sabha he considers Bankipur as his "top priority".
The BJP's list of 40 star campaigners, which Nabin tops, also has Union ministers like Giriraj Singh and Nityanand Rai, local MP Ravi Shankar Prasad and star singers-turned-politicians Manoj Tiwari, Pawan Singh and Maithili Thakur.
In last year's assembly polls, Jan Suraaj Party candidate from Bankipur, Vandana Kumari, had polled less than five per cent of total votes. But with Kishor himself in the fray, BJP sources admit that he may emerge as the principal challenger.
The total number of candidates for the bypoll is 21. These include the runners up last polls, Rekha Gupta of the RJD.
Issues like unemployment, corruption and a crumbling infrastructure is being raised by Kishor and though these resonate with the people, the primary concern for the electors of the constituency, where the turnout has always been notoriously low, is to whether to keep voting for the party they supported even while it was not in power, or to vote for a change.
