State machinery has replaced feudal lords in persecuting our candidates: CPI(ML) leader

Patna, Oct 18 (PTI) CPI (ML) Liberation leader Dipankar Bhattacharya on Saturday said the party was forced to drop Jitendra Paswan from the Bhore seat after he was framed in a fake case by the state, as he came close the winning the election the last time.

The party's general secretary said Paswan lost by around only 400 votes then and alleged that the state machinery had replaced the feudal lords in targeting them.

The CPI(ML) Liberation announced a list of 20 candidates on Saturday for the Bihar election, even as no formal seat-sharing formula had been announced by the Mahagathbandhan, of which it is a part.

Bhattacharya told PTI that the party wanted to field more candidates, but settled on 20 seats as more parties are part of the coalition this time.

He said the party has tried not to brook a friendly contest on any of the seats that it is contesting.

"Out of the 20 seats, 18 are our old seats that we fought last time," he said.

"There are two new seats. One seat is Rajgir, which is a reserved seat in Nalanda, where we fought in the Lok Sabha polls also..." he said.

"The other seat is in the area of Kosi, in Supol-Pipra, where we have a fielded a farmer leader, who is an agricultural scientist. He has been working among the farmers for a long time as a special matter supervisor," he said.

The Left party has fielded Bishwanath Chaudhary from Rajgir and Anil Kumar from Pipra.

"And at one place, we had to change the candidate under pressure. In Bhore, our candidate lost the election by just 400 votes last time. Jitendra Paswan has been targeted ever since," he said.

Paswan was arrested right after he filed his nomination.

"There were plenty of indications that he would not be allowed to become an MLA and would be arrested," Bhattacharya said.

Former JNUSU president Dhananjay has now been picked to fight from the Bhore seat.

Sitting MLA from Darauli, Satyadeo Ram, was also arrested soon after he filed his nomination.

"Satyadeo ji, who is our deputy leader, was arrested for a day in a 2005 case of stopping a train... They have always harassed us a little, but in some cases, we see that it is not just harassment... It is serious persecution and targeting," he said.

Bhattacharya said CPI(ML) leaders have been targeted earlier as well, but in past, it was local feudal lords who targeted it. Now it's being done by the state machinery, he alleged.

"On the Bhore seat, our comrade Umesh Paswan was there. In the election of 1995, for the first time, we got more than 15,000 votes there. And in 1997, many people don't remember this, when Chandrashekhar was killed, at the same time, Umesh Paswan was killed in Gopalganj," he said.

"But at that time, local feudal forces used to support the use of violence to stop the CPI(ML)'s emergence. But now, the whole state is trying to trap them," he said.

"Manoj Manzil, who was our MLA last time from Agiaon, was framed in a false case and disqualified... So … this is happening in a much more systematic way than before," he said.

Bhattacharya regretted that the party could field only one woman candidate, but said he has faith in Divya Gautam, who lost the president's election in Patna University by a very few votes.

The party, which is fielding all its incumbent MLAs, has also come out with report cards for them, in a nod to the democratic pillars of "transparency" and "accountability." The CPI(ML) Liberation, a constituent of the INDIA bloc in Bihar, on Saturday released its list of 20 candidates for the upcoming state election, renominating all its 12 sitting MLAs.

The Left party in the last assembly elections contested 19 seats and won 12. PTI AO VN VN