Anand Mohan Singh | |
---|---|
Member (MLA) in Bihar Legislative Assembly | |
In office 1990–1995 | |
Preceded by | Lahtan Choudhary |
Succeeded by | Abdul Ghafoor |
Constituency | Mahishi |
Member of Parliament in Lok Sabha | |
In office 1996–1999 | |
Preceded by | Hari Kishore Singh |
Succeeded by | Md Anwarul Haque |
Constituency | Sheohar |
Personal details | |
Born | 28 January 1954 |
Political party | Rashtriya Janata Party (1998-present) |
Spouse | |
Children | 3 (including Chetan Anand) |
Residence | Saharsa |
Anand Mohan Singh (born 28 January 1954) is a politician and founder of the now-defunct Bihar People's Party (BPP). He served life imprisonment for instigating killing of Gopalganj district magistrate, G. Krishnaiah in 1994. In April 2023, Government of Bihar amended jail rules for his early release. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Anand Mohan Singh comes from Pachgachhia village in Saharsa district, Bihar. [5] He belongs to Rajput Family. He is the grandson of Ram Bahadur Singh , an Indian freedom fighter. His introduction to politics came through involvement with the Sampoorna Kranti movement of Jayaprakash Narayan, [6] which caused him to drop out of college in 1974. [7]
Singh has had numerous charges filed against him at various times, many of which were either dropped or resulted in acquittal. [7] He and six other people, including his wife Lovely Anand, were accused in relation to the 1994 murder of a Dalit District Magistrate (DM) from Gopalganj, G. Krishnaiah , who was lynched on a major highway near to Muzaffarpur during a funeral cortege for the BPP member and gangster, Chhotan Shukla. In 2007, the Patna High Court sentenced him to death for abetting the crime. The sentence was reduced to rigorous life imprisonment in 2008, when the six other accused were also acquitted due to lack of evidence. The reduction was because there was no evidence that Singh was the actual assailant. In 2012 Singh failed in his appeal to the Supreme Court of India against the reduced sentence. The same Supreme Court hearing dismissed an appeal from the Government of Bihar for reinstatement of the death penalty and for an overturning of the acquittal of the six other people. [8] [9] [lower-alpha 1]
At the time of the original sentence in 2007, Singh was the first Indian politician since independence to have been given a death penalty. [7] Soon after that sentence, upon being transferred from Patna's Beur jail to that of Bhagalpur, Singh went on hunger strike in protest of the facilities and being split from Akhlaq Ahmed and Arun Kumar, who had received death penalties in the same case. The jail authorities were unsympathetic, noting that rules dictated those sentenced to death should sleep on the floor and be allowed only simple food. [10]
In April 2023, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar tweaked jail rules for his early release. [1] [2] [3]
Despite being in prison, Singh aided his wife, Lovely Anand, whom he had married in 1991, in standing as an INC candidate in the 2010 Bihar Assembly elections [11] and as a Samajwadi Party candidate in the 2014 general elections. The Supreme Court had barred convicted criminals from standing in elections but he still has much influence. [7] [12] She has claimed that her husband is the victim of a political conspiracy. [13]
People from his home village of Panchgachiya consider him to be a Robin Hood figure [14] and recently Anand Mohan was released from jail in a 30-year-old murder case to attend his son's engagement ceremony, which was attended by leaders of the ruling coalition, including CM Nitish Kumar. Tehelka said in 2007 that
it was his muscleman image that made Mohan’s name synonymous with terror in Bihar’s poverty-ridden Saharsa-Supaul belt for the past 20 years. He and Munna Shukla faced several criminal cases, many of them for murder, in various courts across Bihar. While Shukla still remains a dreaded figure around Muzaffarpur and Vaishali districts in north Bihar, Mohan is notorious in the Saharsa-Supaul belt as a criminal and sometimes as a kind of folk hero. [7]
In 2023, Government of Bihar under Nitish Kumar amended the prison manual of the state of Bihar, which prohibited any leniency in the matter of punishment to those guilty of killing any government official. This paved the way for release of Anand Mohan from the prison, where he was lodged in connection with the murder of Gopalganj District Magistrate, G. Krishnaiah. Political analysts of Bihar saw this step as a bid to win over the Rajput voters, as the traditional vote banks of every political party was intruded to some extent by Bharatiya Janata Party in state. According to these analysts, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United) political party saw their traditional voters drifting towards the BJP. Hence, the release of Mohan was planned to woo the Rajput community to which latter belonged. [15] [16] [17] In September-October 2023, Mohan became a part of controversy, which erupted over Manoj Jha's recitation of Thakur ka Kuan poem of Om Prakash Valmiki. While Jha clarified that he didn't speak against any caste, but attacked the influential section of society through the poem which signified the social dominance enjoyed by some caste groups and miserable life of poor, Mohan took it as a defamatory statement made against his Rajput caste. Consequently, he made threatening remarks against Jha, and was supported by many Rajput politicians of the state. It was speculated that through this controversy, Mohan was trying to enter the state politics by becoming more acceptable among his community members by posing himself as their defender. It was also believed that Mohan was disgusted by his treatment earlier at the residence of Lalu Prasad Yadav, where he visited along with his wife Lovely Anand. It was reported that he had to stand on the gate of Yadav's residence for some time, before he was told that Yadav couldn't meet him. These events also caused speculations that he might join the Bharatiya Janata Party. [18]
This caste feud in the state between Brahmins and Rajputs became sharp after Lalu Prasad Yadav extended his support to Manoj Jha, calling him as an intellectual. Yadav also criticised Mohan and his son Chetan Anand that they will only speak within boundaries of their intellect. [19]
He has written two anthologies of poems while imprisoned, Quaid mei Azad Kalam (Pen is free behind bars, 2011) [20] and Swadheen Abhivyakti (2014). Gandhi kektas ke phool (2020)
Lalu Prasad Yadav is an Indian politician and president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). He is a former Chief Minister of Bihar (1990-1997), a former Railway Minister of India (2004-2009), and a former Member of Parliament (MP) of the Lok Sabha & Rajya Sabha.
The Samajwadi Krantikari Sena was a political organisation and private army that operated in Saharsa district of Bihar in India. It was founded in 1980 by Anand Mohan Singh and was dominated by members of the Rajput caste who formed part of the feudal elite of Saharsa district and surrounding areas but were reduced to subordinate position due to political condition of period following the implementation Mandal Commission due to spur of some rising backward castes in politics.
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Raghunath Jha was an Indian politician who was Union minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprise and member of the 14th Lok Sabha of India. He represented the Bettiah constituency of Bihar and was a member of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) political party. Born in Village Amba Ojha Tola, in Sheohar He started his career by becoming the Mukhiya of his home panchayat in the year 1967. Thereafter, in 1967 he became Chairman of Zila Parishad. He started his legislative career in 1972 when he was elected as a MLA on Congress Ticket. He was elected from Sheohar for a record six consecutive terms before 1998. He was twice elected as a Member of Parliament from Gopalganj and Bettiah respectively.
Kushwaha is a community of the Indo-Gangetic Plain that has traditionally been involved in agriculture, including beekeeping. The term has been used to represent different sub-castes of the Kachhis, Kachhvahas, Koeris and Muraos. The Kushwaha had worshipped Shiva and Shakta, but beginning in the 20th century, they claim descent from the Suryavansh (Solar) dynasty via Kusha, one of the twin sons of Rama and Sita. At present, it is a broad community formed by coming together of several caste groups with similar occupational backgrounds and socio-economic status, who, over the time, started inter-marrying among themselves and created all India caste network for caste solidarity. The communities which merged into this caste cluster includes Kachhi, Kachhwaha, Kushwaha, Mali, Marrar, Saini, Sonkar, Murai, Shakya, Maurya, Koeri and Panara. In 1921, historian Ganga Prasad Gupta published a book claiming that the Kushwaha were of Kshatriya status or Varna.
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Lovely Anand is an Indian politician from the Janata Dal United, and a Member of Parliament representing Sheohar in Bihar, India and former Member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly. She also served as a member of 10th Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India.
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Samrat Choudhary, also known by his alias Rakesh Kumar is an Indian politician, who is currently serving as Deputy Chief minister of Bihar under Nitish Kumar. He is a member of the Bihar Legislative Council from the Bharatiya Janata Party. He has been the party president of BJP Bihar State unit from March 2023 to 25 July 2024. He has also remained Member of Legislative Assembly and a minister in Government of Bihar in Rashtriya Janata Dal government. Chaudhary has been a former Vice President of BJP for the state of Bihar and currently elected for the second term as MLC in 2020 after his first term ended in 2019. In 2014, Samrat planned a split in Rashtriya Janata Dal by defecting thirteen MLAs as splinter group of the party, later joining the BJP. In 2022, he was selected as the Leader of Opposition in Bihar Legislative Council. In 2024, he was also made the convener of Group of Ministers on Goods and Service Tax rate rationalisation panel.
The Luv-Kush equation is a political term used in the context of the politics of Bihar, to denote the alliance of the agricultural Kurmi and the Koeri caste, which was assumed to be approximately 15% of the state's population The alliance of these two caste groups has remained the support base of Nitish Kumar, as against the MY equation of Lalu Prasad Yadav, which constitutes Muslims and the Yadavs. Caste consciousness and the quest for political representation largely drive the politics of Bihar. The political alliance of the Koeri and the Kurmi castes, termed the "Luv-Kush equation" was formed when a massive Kurmi Chetna Rally was organised by members of the Kurmi community in 1994 against the alleged casteist politics of Lalu Yadav, who was blamed by contemporary community leaders for promoting Yadavs in politics and administration.
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