Kanhaiya Kumar, former student leaders show up in Left parties’ star campaigners list for Bihar polls

The Left parties have roped in former and present Jawaharlal Nehru Students Union (JNUSU) office-bearers, Delhi University and Hyderabad’s student union leaders besides CPI and CPI (ML) politburo members and senior party leaders to campaign for their candidates, just like the procedure followed during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The Left parties’ strategy of reaching out to voters is on the lines of the strategy they had adopted in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to campaign for CPI candidate and former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar who lost to BJP’s Giriraj Singh. Kanhaiya will also campaign for GA candidates in the Bihar assembly polls.

The Left parties, including CPI (ML), CPI and CPI-M, are partners of the Grand Alliance (GA), whose major constituents are RJD and Congress. Under the seat-sharing pact, the RJD has got 144 seats, Congress 70 and Left parties 29. The CPI-ML has got 19 seats, CPI six and CPI-M four.

In its list submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the CPI (ML) has given a list of 15 star campaigners, which include party’s general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, politburo member Kavita Krishnan, national president of AISA and former JNUSU president N Sai Balaji, party’s central committee member Raju Yadav, ex-MLA of Obra (Aurangabad) Rajaram Singh besides Swadesh Bhattarcharya, state secretary Kunal among others.

Krishnan was joint secretary of JNUSU in 1995 and was among the protesters who had marched to Bihar Bhawan to protest the killing of student leader Chandrashekhar Prasad allegedly by the goons of RJD leader Mohammad Sahabuddin in 1997 at Siwan.

Left parties have vouched for seats where they have mass support and they have stated that their aim is only to defeat the NDA. They are also targeting young voters in their respective constituencies.

“The youth are unanimous over the issue of rising unemployment, failing democracy and education,” claimed former JNUSU general secretary and ML’s candidate from Paliganj, Sandeep Saurav, at a press conference on Sunday.

On the other hand, the CPI-M has submitted a list of 30 star campaigners to its central committee, which has its popular leaders like party general secretary Sitaram Yechury, politburo members Hanan Mollah and SR Pillai, senior leader Brinda Karat, state secretary Awadesh Kumar, JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh besides Hyderabad student union leader Abhishek Nandan among others.

Ghosh had catapulted to national news after she was allegedly hit with an iron rod by masked goons in JNU campus early this year.

The CPI in a press release issued on Sunday came out with its list of 30 star campaigners, which, besides Kanhaiya, has party’s general secretary D Raja, state secretary and candidate from Harlakhi (Darbhanga) Ram Naresh Pandey, national secretary Atul Kumar Anjan, Amarjeet Kaur, Ramendra Kumar among others.