Bihar elections: Covert poster wars spare none, spice up poll campaign

PATNA: Anonymous posters coming up overnight and taking potshots at ruling and opposition alliances have added to the poll heat in Bihar. And they spare none, be it CM Nitish Kumar or incarcerated RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his family.

Some of the posters depicted the RJD first family as “bhar” (burden) on Bihar were pasted  across the state capital on Monday. The next day, Patna was flooded with posters highlighting lines of PM Narendra Modi spoken against Nitish during the general and assembly elections of 2014 and 2015.

“Who is behind such kind of poster war is known but none of them had taken credit of putting such poster,” Anjani Kumar, a senior citizen of Patna, said. A few days ago, posters were put up on every road sides of Patna highlighting Modi’s praise of Nitish. Needless to say that it generated a strong political reaction among the opposition.

According to an official of Patna Municipal Corporation, Patna has see more than 15 rounds of poster wars since October last year featuring  ruling and opposition parties with either side not taking credit for the covert operations. 

In fact, posters began appearing against the Nitish  government when Patna got submerged under rainwater in October 2019. The anonymous posters against the chief minister and his Cabinet colleagues were pasted all over Patna targeting them on waterlogging that had wrecked watery havoc on the lives of the people.