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Hours before filing his nomination as an Independent candidate from Bihar’s Purnea Lok Sabha seat on April 4, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, 56, strides into Arjun Bhavan at 9 a.m. Yadav’s entry brings a certain energy to the many-roomed, single-storeyed structure, the newly renovated office from where he monitors his men execute work, which is ironically located near Jail Chowk, Purnea.
The politician, who likes to ride his Harley Davidson in his free time, is an accused in 41 cases, including kidnapping and rioting, as per his election affidavit, and has spent over 15 years in jail. In office, the five-time Bihar MP issues instructions, and is then driven to his modest house, Ranjan Niketan, on Court Road, about a kilometre and a half away. He takes about half an hour to change out of his tee and into more formal clothes, then offers prayers, and bends to touch his parents’ feet.
Outside, about 100 of his supporters shout slogans in his favour. “Purnea ka MP kaisa ho, Pappu Yadav jaisa ho (How should the MP of Purnea be? Just like Pappu Yadav). His sister, Anita Ranjan, showers him with flowers. Climbing into one of his SUVs that follows six others, Yadav, who has won from Purnea thrice, heads to Town Hall, only to stop about a kilometre away. Communication between the cars in the cavalcade is through walkie-talkies, and he instructs the cars to stop.
There are about 1,000 people waiting to greet him, and he steps out and walks with them. Autorickshaw drivers, paan shop owners, and mechanics chant slogans while holding aloft the flag of the Congress emblazoned with the party’s symbol: a hand in the Abhayamudra. He kisses the hands of the young and old, asking them to vote for him. Manoj Kumar Shaw, a daily wager, says, “He is very down to earth. Whenever there is a problem, he reaches the spot as soon as possible, and makes sure to help those in need.”
In the car, at his feet is an assortment of food items: apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas; rusk, makhana fried in desi ghee; and dozens of Diet Coke cans. “I ensure that everything is with me so that I can stop anywhere and have my lunch. I am a vegetarian, and all this will power me on. Campaigning in this scorching summer is a tough task,” Yadav explains. He has a full lunch in the car too: rice, dal, pumpkin curry, peas-potato, and yam, with a home-made garlic-chilli chutney. On the seats are several cushions for him to recline on, between interactions.
On March 20 this year, Yadav had merged his Jan Adhikar Party (Loktantrik), formed in 2015 when he was expelled from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for alleged ‘anti-party’ activity, with the Congress, a party his wife Ranjeet Ranjan is part of, and staked claim to the Purnea seat in north-east Bihar. However, after the INDIA bloc’s seat-sharing talks, the seat went to the RJD. Upset over not being chosen, Yadav called it “political murder” and decided to contest as an Independent.
Yadav is sweating, not just because of the heat, now around 40 degrees Celsius, but also because he weighs 150 kg. “I have always chosen the path of struggle,” says the son of a landowning farmer, who claims his money still comes from the land.
About 200 metres from the District Magistrate’s office, a revamped colonial building, an aide zooms down the street on a motorbike. Yadav jumps on and rides the rest of the way, his customary flair on display. After about 45 minutes, back in his SUV, he retracts the sunroof, pops out from the top, waves, and thanks the crowds with folded hands, saying, “I requested everyone, but nobody listened to me, so I had to make this decision [of contesting independently]. Purnea is my mother and I will not leave her.” He makes this claim despite becoming an MP the last two times from the Madhepura parliamentary seat, west of Purnea district. He says he had spoken to RJD chief Lalu Prasad about setting aside the Purnea seat for him this time.
Now, the constituency will witness a triangular contest, among Yadav; the RJD’s Rupauli MLA Bima Bharti, whose husband Awadhesh Mandal is in jail on murder and extortion charges; and Janata Dal (United)’s Santosh Kushwaha, who won the seat in the 2014 and 2019 polls. As Purnea goes to polls on April 26, Yadav claims he has the blessings of the top Congress leadership.
There are about 19 lakh voters in the constituency and 40% are Muslim, as per the recent Bihar caste survey. Many of them support Yadav, who also has the backing of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Purnea consists of six Assembly constituencies: Kasba, Banmankhi, Rupauli, Dhamdaha, Purnia, and Korha.
Pappu’s growth
Born in Khurda village, Purnea, on Christmas Eve in 1967, Yadav grew up going to Anand Marg School, Anand Palli, in Supaul district, which faces floods every monsoon. He was lovingly given the nickname Pappu by his grandfather Laxmi Prasad Mandal. He did a BA in Political Science at B.N. Mandal University, Madhepura, and postgraduate studies from the Indira Gandhi National Open University in human rights, disaster management, and social sciences. “If not a politician, I would have been a social worker,” he says.
In his autobiography, Drohkal Ka Pathik (One who walks on the path of rebellion), which was published when he was behind bars in 2013, Yadav says, “From childhood, there was a desire to earn a name in life. I must have been young when I would sing this song to my mother: Mata, mujhko bandook de do; mai sarhad par jaunga, dushman ko maar bhagaunga (Mother, give me the gun; I will go to the border and drive away the enemy).”
He also remembers asking his mother, Shanti Priya, if he would become famous by throwing bombs at leaders in Circuit House. His mother would buy him books to clear the National Defence Academy examination to channel this feeling.
In the early 90s, Yadav met Ranjeet, a Kashmiri Pandit-turned-Sikh. “I saw her on the tennis court, playing,” he says. In a cliched story, it was love at first sight, but her parents didn’t want her to marry him. Ranjeet liked that Yadav “always chose the path of struggle” and “fought against injustice for the people”.
“The person who really helped convince her parents was S.S. Ahluwaliaji (former Union Minister from Bihar currently fielded from the Asansol seat by the BJP).” They married in 1994, when he was 27 and she, 20. Twenty years later, Ranjeet won the Supaul Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket, though she lost the election in 2019.
Ranjeet feels it is the Congress’s loss for not including her husband in their list of candidates. “It is very unfortunate that he is not part of the INDIA bloc. He is a strong leader and has been Purnea MP thrice. If he had been on our side, we would have been much stronger.”
Anita, a doctor who lives in Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh, but is currently in Purnea to support Yadav, says her brother is a fighter and never gives up. “He has done a lot of work for the people of Purnea and they consider him a messiah of the poor.” His two children, a son, 27, and daughter, 19, are studying in Delhi.
Santosh Kushwaha, who works in a local iron factory, says during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, he needed a Remdesivir injection, but could not afford its price on the black market. “I contacted Pappuji and the next day one of his associates brought the medicine to my home. From that day onwards, I started respecting him like a god,” he says.
Similarly, Mansur Khan, who has a meat shop near the Purnea railway station, recalls how Yadav helped him with ₹50,000 when his wife was hospitalised six months ago.
Pappu Yadav coming out of Beur Central Jail, Patna, in 2004. He went on to win the Lok Sabha election from Madhepura that year. | Photo Credit: File Photo
Crime and punishment
In the early 90s, the Kosi belt, bordered by the Himalayas in the north and the Bagmati river in the south, witnessed the killing of over 100 people in a battle for caste supremacy. The chief protagonists were Yadav, part of the OBC community, and Anand Mohan, a Rajput strongman convicted of murder, who was released from jail last year. His wife, Lovely Anand, is contesting the Lok Sabha poll from the Sheohar seat in Bihar.
“I first became an MLA in 1990, contesting as an Independent from the Singhesarsthan Assembly seat,” says Yadav, thinking back on his journey. In 1991, he won the Purnea Lok Sabha seat as an Independent but the election was cancelled owing to allegations of poll rigging. He emerged victorious from the seat again in 1996, this time on a Samajwadi Party ticket, and in 1999 as an Independent. He then became an MP from the Madhepura seat in 2004 and 2014, both times contesting as a candidate of the RJD.
In 1999, he was arrested in the murder case of CPI(M) legislator Ajit Sarkar, who was gunned down in a moving car along with his driver, Harendra Sharma, and a party worker, Ashfaqur Rehman. The CBI had named five people, including Yadav, in its chargesheet.
After spending nearly 13 years in jail, he was acquitted by the Patna High Court in 2013. The CBI went on to appeal against the order and the matter is pending before the Supreme Court. In fact, he had won the election in 1999 from behind bars. “We needed to shift him from one prison to another because we felt he was running nefarious activities from jail,” says an IPS officer on condition of anonymity. As a result, he was an inmate in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, and Bihar’s Beur, Purnea, and Hazaribagh jails.
A former IPS officer, who once served as Superintendent of Beur Central Jail, says, “Raids would take place in his cell frequently. In 2004, during a raid, a cell phone was found in his shoe, and more than 600 calls were made from that cell phone, several to a then Minister.”
In jail, he had once approached the court to grant him bail for bariatric surgery, but his appeal was denied. The weight, he says, doesn’t add to his bahubali (strongman) image, which he feels is a media construct. “I don’t like rich people who exploit the poor and I just believe in justice for the poor,” he says.
K.R. Hasmi alias Dulha, one of his associates who spent three months in Purnea jail with him, claims “no special treatment was ever meted out to Pappuji.” He adds that Yadav followed all the rules, and that he remembered his wife and children a lot while in jail.
The communities unhappy with Yadav are the tribal people and Bengalis, who were supporters of Sarkar, who claimed he lived simply and stayed in a rented accommodation, paying ₹600, despite being an MLA for four terms.
In Purnea, people remember the late CPI(M) leader as a messiah of the poor. “Ajit Sarkar was like our mother and father. He found both food and shelter for us,” says Mundu Sen, a local, who was devastated when 107 bullets were pumped into Sarkar’s body.
