In a BJP stronghold, Jharkhand’s ‘best MLA’ tries to upset the apple cart with RJD help

“Hamara naam kis liye suna hai? Jhooth bolne wala nahi, na? Hum logon ke liye bhid jaane wale hain, chahe sarkar koi rahe, CM, PM koi rahe (Why have you heard my name? Not for telling lies, right? I fight for the people irrespective of the government and whoever is the CM or PM).”

This is the main election plank of 46-year-old Vinod Singh, the CPI(M-L) Liberation candidate in the Kodarma Lok Sabha constituency that votes on Monday. Singh is running a crowdfunded election campaign and relies on a group of loyal supporters — a friend from Mumbai handles his photographs, another looks after his social media, with followers who “believe in his work” in tow.

The sitting MLA from the Bagodar Assembly constituency in Kodarma, Singh has cultivated a reputation for “raising the issues of the poor and marginalised classes” in the Jharkhand Assembly. Before his win in the Bagodar poll in 2019, he lost in 2014, with his previous wins here coming in 2009 and 2005.

A postgraduate in social sciences from the Banaras Hindu University, Singh entered electoral politics after his father and firebrand CPI(ML) Liberation leader Mahendra Singh was assassinated in 2005. “Probably I would have been a professor. My father never wanted me to join electoral politics, but my three sisters and I were politically aware. His death did not surprise me, since he had irked the power centres for fighting for the poor,” Singh said of his father, who represented Bagodar twice and was allegedly killed by Naxals.

In this Lok Sabha contest, he is hoping to convince voters in the five other Assembly segments in Kodarma in his fight against BJP heavyweight Annapurna Devi, the sitting Kodarma MP and a Union Minister of State for Education. Current state BJP president