Voter Adhikar Yatra: WATCH highlights from Day 3, as winds of change blow through Bihar

Travelling through Bihar's town and cities on Day 3 of the INDIA bloc's Voter Adhikar Yatra — part of the Opposition's three-pronged campaign against the vagaries of the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of the state's assembly elections this year and the alleged evidences of 'Vote chori' from across India in last year's elections — Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav stopped to make a few pithy remarks on the state of democracy and the fight to ensure that most basic right of Indian citizenship: 'one man, one vote.'

Besides urging the public to join the campaign and take advantage of help from the party workers to redress any untoward deletions of their names from the voter lists, one of the statements from the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha was to encourage Bihar to think about change as the state heads to assembly polls: "Bihar has the highest unemployment rate," he said, "If we have to end unemployment in Bihar, we must end 'Made in China' and bring in 'Made in Bihar, Made in India'."

Incidentally, China's foreign minister was in Delhi meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, ostensibly to strengthen bilateral ties on the 75th anniversary of India–China relations — though no official verdict on fertilisers and rare earths emerged, as had been hoped.

For his part, earlier in the day, CPI(M-L) Liberation leader Dipankar Bhattacharya — who had undertaken a padayatra in the state just some months back — spoke of his confidence that Bihar was already ripe for change. The Dalit people, he said This, he explained, was the whole impetus behind the 'surgical strike' by way of the SIR instituted by the Election Commission of India.

On behalf of the RJD, former deputy chief minister of the state Tejashwi Yadav also spoke of the winds of change. "For the betterment of Bihar and Biharis, it is necessary to change the inactive, incompetent and ineffective NDA government that has been crawling under the leadership of a tired, unconscious and insensate chief minister for 20 years," he urged.

"We will move forward in togetherness and build a new Bihar with a new vision," he promised.

Speaking of mandates, Rahul Gandhi aired his suspicions that one day it would come to light that the current NDA leadership in charge of the state had also stolen their mandate.

"One day the truth will come to light, in which it will be revealed: the previous election in Bihar (the 2020 assembly) was also stolen. The people of the Election Commission should remember — our government will definitely take action against them [then]," he said.

Not politicians alone — of whom several are also petitioners against the ECI in the Supreme Court in the matter of the SIR — but many a concerned citizen and activist has been disturbed by the conundrum of a voters' list that was acceptable in January and isn't now. If the list was so very flawed — by some 65 lakh names! — in January, then what does that mean for the Lok Sabha polls last year, they ask. And if that is fine, and that 2024 mandate to the current NDA government at the Centre was sound, surely this new draft list cannot be?

One of the critics in that vein has been academic Yogendra Yadav, who is also a petitioner to the Supreme Court in the SIR matter, and who said in an interview published yesterday, "Democracy is when the voter chooses the government, but when the government starts choosing the voter — that is not democracy, it is something else!"

Tejashwi Yadav went on to echo him today:

The 'something else', Gandhi has alleged before — with allies taking up the refrain in force — is 'vote chori'. However, the youth of Bihar will not stand for it, he said, addressing the crowds in Saidpur.

"In today’s India, the poor have only their vote left. If your vote is taken away, your ration card, land and everything else will also be taken away," the Congress leader said.

He isn't reaching. This was the exact apprehension put forth by Mintu Paswan, one of the supposed 'dead' voters eliminated from the rolls by the ECI who turned up in person before the Supreme Court to plead his case. Paswan was worried he and his brother, also disenfranchised, stood to lose access to welfare schemes, having been declared 'dead'. (Read National Herald's exclusive interview with Paswan and three others in similar straits here.)

'Vote chori', Gandhi lamented, was an attack on Bharat Mata [Mother India] herself, as he brought forward Subodh Kumar — yet another newly disenfranchised person who still has his voter ID card — to address the crowd. There are, he said, lakhs like him.

The Voter Adhikar Yatra takes a break tomorrow, 20 August, and will resume on 21 August, Thursday, from Sheikhpura to Sikandra, and then to Munger.