Many of our activists and well-wishers were expecting the list of CPIML Liberation candidates in Bihar elections to be a bit longer with a few more names from a few more districts. That did not materialise but we are glad that we have been successful in ensuring a slightly bigger coalition this time with the participation of a few more parties.
We had decided that there would be no 'friendly fight' in any seat. On our part we have stuck to that principle in spite of having a limited tally of only twenty seats. We hope the INC and RJD and any other party currently locked in a possible 'friendly fight' situation are able to sort out their seat-sharing problems and ensure complete unity by the time of withdrawal of candidates.
Our list obviously suffers from several imbalances and we could not give an opportunity to many deserving comrades. Balancing the local constituency-level aspirations with the larger question of representation is a very tough ask, especially with such a limited number of seats and within the constraints of a coalition arrangement. Hope all our comrades and friends will understand the situation and extend their generous support to all our candidates in this crucial electoral battle.
Elections are a form of collective struggle where an individual plays the role of a candidate only with the hard work and united untiring effort of hundreds of activists and becomes successful only with the goodwill of thousands of citizens and the support and participation of tens of thousands of electors. And for a communist party like ours every form of struggle comes with attendant risks and persecution of the powers that be, and elections are all the more so.
To take the example of Bhore(SC) in Gopalganj, Comrade Jitendra Paswan, our proposed candidate from Bhore(SC) was arrested after filing nomination and we had to field Comrade Dhananjay, former president of JNUSU as our eventual candidate to carry forward the battle for justice in Bhore on behalf of all victims of political vendetta, state repression and feudal-communal violence. In 1995 Comrade Umesh Paswan was our first candidate from this seat who had polled nearly 16,000 votes and finished third, but died a martyr only two years later.
In 2020, Comrade Jitendra polled more than 70,000 votes but victory still eluded him by a narrow margin of 400-odd votes. And soon after the election he was implicated in a false case, and much like Comrade Manoj Manzil, our 2020 MLA from Agiaon (SC) in Bhojpur, he too faces the threat of electoral disqualification in the event of a possible conviction. The CPI(ML) election campaign is not about seat sharing and electoral engineering - it is about withstanding this repression and overcoming serial hurdles in an extremely unequal battle.
The right to vote that many of our comrades could exercise for the first time in 1989 came with the price of a big massacre. Every victory since then has been won at a great price of martyrdom and repression. From the TADA sentence inflicted on Comrade Shah Chand and others in Arwal after the February 2000 elections to the martyrdom of Comrade Anil Barooah in Assam while addressing an election meeting in Dibrugarh in February 1998 and the assassination of Comrade Mahendra Singh in Jharkhand after filing his nomination in January 2005 - our journey in the electoral arena has been full of sacrifices.
Remember the martyrs and advance their mission. We shall fight, we shall win.
