PATNA: A majority of south Bihar segments of four Lok Sabha constituencies, namely Gaya, Aurangabad, Jamui and Nawada, fall in the region considered a Maoist hotbed.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bihar has only five districts in the Maoist super sensitive list, including Lakhisarai.
Data mined by the ministry suggests that ‘classical’ Naxal-infested districts such as Rohtas, Bhabua, Arwal, Bhojpur and Jehanabad have recorded a sharp decline in incidents of Red Terror.
The Lok Sabha segments in Bihar
For the first phase of polling, the Bihar seats, which are in proximity to active Maoist districts in Jharkhand such as Palamu, Chatra and Koderma, Bokaro and Hazaribagh and Chhattisgarh and UP’s Sonebhadra district, have been listed as ‘affected’.
Among the biggies who will be in the fray in the area are former chief minister, Jitan Ram Manjhi, BJP’s Sushil Singh in Aurangabad and Chirag Paswan of LJP at Jamui.
A top official in the Bihar police headquarters said, “In all these constituencies, the biggest challenge for police would not only be to provide security to candidates but also detect landmines, especially in many segments of Gaya, Aurangabad, Jamui and Nawada-Munger arc.”
While Naxalites use jungle routes to carry out the guerrilla attacks in Bihar and escape to Jharkhand and Purulia district of West Bengal and vice versa, the easy availability of explosives due to huge mining areas in the vicinity, also add to security issues.
Recently, security forces seized 372kg gelatine sticks and 1000 detonators from an SUV in Muffasil police station area of Aurangabad. The Jehanabad police also recovered explosive materials, which were meant for making improvised explosive devices, from a village in the Vishnuganj police station area.
Sushil advises Shatrughan to quit politics
Even as ex-BJP MP, Shatrughan Sinha welcomed the upcoming fight with Union IT minister Ravishankar Prasad in Patna Sahib, Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar and top BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi had a word of advice for him Sunday.
Sinha, who has been a vocal critic of the BJP ever since he was denied a Central berth in 2014, was told “He should not cheat the party which sustained him.”
Modi, speaking to this paper from Bangalore over the phone said, “Sinha should gracefully quit politics due to his age and loss of standing among the people”.
Modi said “Sinha has cheated BJP. He will find it difficult even to find a single polling agent. The Patna Sahib seat has four BJP MLAs, who will not allow him to get a single worker.”