Highlight
- Rahul Gandhi, while campaigning, appealed to vote for “sister” Subhashini.
- Subhashini Yadav is competing from the Bihariganj seat in Madhepura
- Rahul Gandhi, while campaigning, appealed to vote for “sister” Subhashini.
Patna:
Subhashini Yadav, a congressional rookie in the Bihar elections, has the great task of protecting her father’s legacy. Sharad Yadav, a veteran politician, won and lost many times in the Madhepura Lok Sabha constituency.
The 73-year-old is currently in a hospital in Delhi.
His daughter Subhashini is running from the Bihariganj seat in Madhepura, where the vote will take place on Saturday, in the last phase of the Bihar elections.
Election posters in the constituency feature her as Subhashini Sharad Yadav.
Sharad Yadav has represented Madhepura in Parliament four times. He lost the last two Lok Sabha elections.
Subhashini Yadav is from Madhya Pradesh, but he chose Madhepura for his first electoral contest as a show of respect for BP Mandal, the author of the Mandal Commission report, who was born here.
The Mandal Commission report, which provides a 27 percent reservation in government posts for other backward castes, was implemented by the VP Singh government at the center where Sharad Yadav was a senior member. Mr. Yadav, along with Rashtriya Janata Dal President Lalu Yadav and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, had played an important role in the “Mandal movement” that led to the job quota in the decade 1990.
“This has been my father Sharad Yadav’s karmabhoomi and the kind of support and love they have given him for the past 25-30 years, I too can feel the same here today,” he said at a public rally in Bihariganj on Wednesday.
“I am your candidate, your daughter. I have come here to serve you, to fulfill my father’s dreams,” he told the crowd.
Congressional leader Rahul Gandhi, who was campaigning with her, praised Sharad Yadav and asked the crowd to vote for “his sister” Subhashini.
“I have not said this in any of my speeches in the Bihar elections. I want a guarantee from you that you will make the daughter of Sharad ji win the elections. I am not asking for me, but for you and Sharad Yadav ji, which is their leader, “Gandhi said.
Subhashini Raj Rao, married to a Haryana Congressional family, joined the party just before the Bihar elections.
Although the Madhepura assembly seat would have been the ideal launching pad for her, Congress had to settle for Bihariganj as Madhepura went to the RJD side.
Subhashini Yadav faces two-time Janata Dal United MLA Niranjan Mehta, Lok Janshakti Party candidate Vijay Kumar Singh and Prabhash Kumar of the Janadhikar Party (JAP) headed by former Madhepura MP Pappu Yadav.
Janata Dal United’s Dinesh Chandra Yadav had won from Madhepura in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, defeating Sharad Yadav, who had competed from Lalu Yadav’s RJD.
JDU chief and chief minister Nitish Kumar, while recently campaigning for his party candidate, refrained from speaking out against Sharad Yadav, his former party colleague, and Subhashini.
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