With the Lok Sabha election barely three weeks away and the names of candidates expected to be announced shortly, many ticket hopefuls in Bihar are said to be queuing up at the doors of pundits, astrologers and fortune-tellers. Some of them are privately performing special pujas (rituals) in the State, some others are doing so outside of it.
“When the election approaches, politicians from Bihar as well as other States start approaching people like us either to know their poll prospects or to perform special pujas to better their chances,” Noida-based astrologer Swami Sarvabhoot Sharanam told The Hindu over phone. “Every day, I get phone calls from some politicians from Bihar, and even Ahmedabad, to know their electoral fortunes but I perform pujas only for those who actually believe in [the] divinity [of the pujas],” he added.
Swami Sharanam is from Bihar and has lived in Noida’s (U.P.) Sector 82 near Delhi for a long time. He shot into limelight in July 2016, when Pakistan cricket player Danish Kaneria visited him for a special puja to get over the lifetime ban imposed on him.
Similarly, Patna-based astrologer Ajit Kumar said that several politicians or their associates have approached him privately. “I scan the solar and lunar phases of their kundali (birth chart) and do my own reading of planetary movements…some get positive feedback, some negative as well,” he said. Mr. Kumar, however, refused to reveal names of such politicians. “Revealing their name will be a breach of trust,” he said.
Noida-based astrologer Swami Sarvabhoot Sharanam told The Hindu over phone that several politicians from Bihar have consulted pundits at places like Ujjain and Datia in Madhya Pradesh, Vindhyanchal in Uttar Pradesh, and visited the Kamrup-Kamakhya temple in Assam, for special pujas.
Former Bihar CM chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad, too, has been performing pujas at these places, he said. In July 2013, Mr. Yadav’s visit to the Pagla Baba ashram in U.P.’s Mirzapur made headlines in newspapers. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s video meeting with a Siwan-based tantric, too, went viral before the 2015 State Assembly poll.
Another pundit, Diwakar Jha, said that the most popular puja was either navagraha paath (mantra ritual for nine planets) or the Bagalamukhi ritual for desired results. “Sitting MPs want to know whether they will be repeated [as MPs] or not and, if repeated, what their would chances be. Some of them also want us to perform pujas to mar the prospects of their rivals,” he told The Hindu.
Some other politicians, though, prefer to visit the Sai Baba and the Shani Shingnapur temples in Maharashtra. “Though it is difficult to say how many of them could win the poll because of all this, it’s definitely a boon and boom-time for pundits, astrologers and fortune-tellers,” senior RJD leader Shivanand Tiwari told The Hindu.