The successor of President Ram Nath Kovind will be decided next month as India’s 16th presidential election is scheduled to be held on July 18. The Election Commission has begun the nomination process and the last date has been fixed as June 29. One nomination that has created a buzz on social media is of Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yadav has planned to throw his hat in the ring, firm in his belief that there must be a Bihari in the contest.
However, here’s a twist. Yadav is not the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief, but a resident of Saran district, which incidentally has been the “karmabhoomi” (land of work) of his famous namesake, Yadav claims to have already booked a flight ticket to Delhi where he proposes to file his nomination papers on June 15.
This is not the first time Yadav will be filing nomination papers for the Presidential election. He had also competed against the incumbent Kovid in 2017.
“My papers got rejected last time since these were not endorsed by an adequate number of proposers. This time, I am better prepared”, Yadav said.
A resident of Yadav Rahimpur village in Marhaura assembly segment of Saran, Yadav is barely 42, young enough to be a son of the RJD president, though, like the latter, he too takes care of a large family.
“I practise agriculture for a living and engage in social work. I have seven children. My eldest daughter is married,” said Yadav.
It is not surprising that acquaintances call him “dharti pakad” (one who clings on to the earth), an epithet that has come to be associated, in India’s political lexicon, with those who like to contest elections for the sake of thrill and publicity.
Yadav takes the derision on his chin and recalls with pride that the RJD supremo had “blamed me for the defeat of his wife Rabri Devi in 2014 Lok Sabha polls”.
Rabri Devi, a former chief minister herself, had contested from Saran which was previously represented by her husband who got disqualified in 2013 following his conviction in the fodder scam.
She lost to the BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy, who rode the Narendra Modi wave, by a margin of around 50,000 votes.
Lalu Prasad Yadav polled less than 10,000 votes and forfeited his deposit.
Undeterred, Yadav again jumped into the fray in 2019 and polled about six thousand votes.
“I keep trying my luck, from Panchayats to Presidentship. If nothing else, I may come to hold the record for contesting the maximum number of elections,” he said with a deadpan expression.
The last date to file a nomination paper is June 29 while the scrutiny of the nominations paper will be held till June 30. July 2 has been kept as the last date for withdrawal of nominations. The final counting will take place on July 21. The voting for the presidential election will take place in Parliament and the premises of state assemblies.
In the 2017 presidential polls, a total of 108 nominations were filed by 95 candidates. A candidate can file four nomination papers. After scrutiny, only two names were left in the fray, NDA candidate Kovind and Opposition candidate Meira Kumar. Kovind won by securing 6,61,278 votes, while Congress-backed Meira Kumar got 4,34,241 votes.
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