‘Bahubali’ Anant beats Nitish’s man in badlands of Mokama

Patna: Known as Chhote Sarkaar, ‘bahubali’ Anant Singh quite looks the part -- moustache twirled upwards, dark glasses and the frills – he is known to have kept a pet python at home in the past. He always speaks in Magahi, the local dialect. He first went to jail when he was in his teens and has been shot at twice. In 2004, he had a five-hour gun battle with Special Task Force (STF) personnel in which eight of his men and one STF jawan was killed.He has 32 cases lodged against him.
Singh, a Bhumihar (a moneyed upper caste), is also one of the handful of independent candidates who managed to buck the trend and come out unscathed from what was billed as the war between the NDA and the Mahagathbandhan. The infamous don, who contested the polls from Mokama while lodged in Bhagalpur jail – 150km from his constituency – is among the seven winners who are not affiliated to either of the two alliances.
Bahubalis – musclemen-turned-politicians – have always ruled the Gangetic badlands of Mokama, a constituency of about 2.3 lakh voters, including about 90,000 Bhumihars. “First it was Anant’s elder brother Dilip Singh of the RJD (1990 and 1995), then Surajbhan Singh (2000) and then Anant (2005 and 2010 on a JD-U ticket),” said Upendra Sharma, a retired professor of chemistry at B N M College, Barahiya.
After becoming the Mokama MLA, Anant shifted to Patna and allegedly procured huge plots of prime real estate in the capital. He even tricked Lalu Prasad into selling him his horse at Sonepur fair. Sources say Singh is the third-richest candidate in Bihar polls.
Anant, who was once quite close to CM Nitish Kumar, was sacrificed for the sake of forming the Mahagathbandhan. In June this year, RJD chief Lalu Prasad convinced Kumar to send Anant to jail for allegedly killing a Yadav who was apparently notorious for harassing women. A few days before the assembly election, Anant was shifted to the Shaheed Jubba Sahni central jail in Bhagalpur in anticipation that he might create disturbance during the election.
This year, Anant, who quit JD-U after he was jailed, was up against three other Bhumihars: two local musclemen -- Lok Janshakti Party’s Kanhaiya Singh and the Jan Adhikar Party’s Lallan Singh -- and JD-U’s clean-cut Neeraj Kumar. He got 54,005 votes, defeating Kumar by 18,348 votes.
Shaibal Gupta, a social scientist and founder member-secretary of Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, said: “Both Anant Singh and Neeraj Kumar who contested with the JD(U) ticket from Mokama seat, belong to the Bhumihar caste, so caste could not have been the deciding factor. He is not a Robin Hood-kind of a mass leader that people will vote for him by choice. However, he has not been convicted yet and has enough clout to get the people to vote for him.”
So how did the muscleman retain the seat in an election that was dominated by buzzwords like jungleraaj and vikas. With Anant in jail, his wife Neelam Devi, who also contested for the same seat as another Independent, went door to door telling people that Chhote Sarkar is the victim of a Yadav “political conspiracy”. Then there were rumours that BJP workers in Mokama backed Anant as they were unhappy with the NDA candidate Kanhaiya Singh.