BJP, Congress pitch Ananth Kumar, Mallikarjun M Kharge against each other in Bihar

BENGALURU: The Bihar election campaign has a Karnataka connection for the two main national parties, the BJP and Congress: The former has put Union minister and Bengaluru South MP Ananth Kumar, a Brahmin, in charge of the party campaign in Bihar, whereas the Congress has put its Lok Sabha floor leader and Kalaburgi MP Mallikarjun M Kharge, a Dalit, as the head of its candidate selection committee.

Kharge and Ananth Kumar headed their respective party units in Karnataka at different points of time, but neither has had a face-to face confrontation till now. "They had to go all the way to Bihar to fight elections against each other," a BJP leader said.

This is the second time Ananth Kumar has been put in charge of the poll campaign in Bihar. BJP insiders say that he has some amount of knowledge on the ground and has been effective in dealing with campaign needs for the party in other states also. Kharge, however, has largely confined himself to Karnataka, though he is known to be a very astute politician. Both of them are said to have taken up the campaign quite seriously and have been working round-the-clock.

Analysts in Bihar felt that both the BJP and the Congress went for someone totally unconnected with the state to occupy such crucial posts to project "neutrality." The contention is that a local leader or anyone with strong connections to Bihar wouldn’t be able to give tickets or oversee a campaign without having to deal with "compulsions and biases."

Former Patna university professor and analyst Nawal K Chaudhary told ET that the elections were being fought purely on hero worship and not on issues: "The disadvantage of having someone from outside is much, much larger than the advantage of so-called neutrality."