Patna, Oct 6 (IANS): After the acquittal of Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, his Jan Adhikar Party (JAP) is brimming with confidence and its leaders believe that they are capable of negotiating with the Congress party.
Raghwendra Kushwaha, state president of the JAP, said that the Congress should rethink its decision to contest the by-election from Tarapur assembly constituency in Munger district.
"We request the Congress party to rethink its decision to contest from Tarapur assembly constituency seat and give it to JAP. We will wait till tomorrow (Thursday) and then announce our candidate," Kushwaha said.
"We have selected the candidates for Tarapur and Kusheshwar Asthan. We have already given a ticket to Yogi Chaupal to contest Kusheshwar Asthan. If the Congress party will not withdraw its candidate from Tarapur, we will contest the election on our own."
The leaders of the JAP are looking for sympathy votes from these two places due to its leader Pappu Yadav serving a jail term for five months after he exposed BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy for keeping unused ambulances during the peak of the second wave of the corona pandemic. He was arrested in a 32-year-old alleged kidnapping case in Madhepura district.
After the acquittal of Pappu Yadav, the Congress party has also reportedly realized that the sympathy votes for Pappu Yadav may help the Congress to gain political ground in Bihar once the negotiations between it and Pappu Yadav take place.
Congress leaders MLC Premchandra Mishra and Ajit Sharma, the CLP leader of Bihar, hinted at negotiations with the JAP.
"The ideology of the Congress party and Pappu Yadav is similar and his relationship with the party is also smooth," Mishra said on the day of Yadav's acquittal on Monday.
Ajit Sharma said: "Pappu Yadav is considered as the second biggest Yadav leader of Bihar after Lalu Prasad. The Congress party is in contact with him. If Pappu Yadav expresses his desire to contest the election, we will give the Tarapur seat to him."
Though political mathematics on the negotiation of seats may be underway between the Congress and the JAP, the voters of these two constituencies know that the contest would mainly be between the RJD and the JDU.