1/5th of can­did­ates in Bihar fray are scions

Patna: Two sons of a former Union min­is­ter pit­ted against each other, a hus­band and a wife con­test­ing from neigh­bour­ing con­stitu­en­cies (from the same party), and sev­eral mem­bers of a fam­ily con­test­ing from one party –– all reflect the influ­ence of power­ful polit­ical fam­il­ies in Bihar. In sev­eral con­stitu­en­cies, vet­eran lead­ers have passed the polit­ical baton to their chil­dren, even grand­chil­dren.

In all, about a fifth of the can­did­ates from the main polit­ical parties in the fray are from the polit­ical fam­il­ies, accord­ing to an ana­lysis of can­did­ate lists announced by polit­ical parties.

Around a third of the tick­ets alloc­ated by the main oppos­i­tion party Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are to dyn­asts and over half of the tick­ets issued by Jiten Ram Man­jhi’s Hindus­tan Awam Morcha - Sec­u­lar (HAM-S), part of the BJP-led National Demo­cratic Alli­ance (NDA), have gone to his own fam­ily. Around 18% of the Bhar­atiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 101 can­did­ates are dyn­asts, as are 17% of part­ner Janata Dal United’s (JD-U) 101 .

Around a third of the tick­ets alloc­ated by the main oppos­i­tion party Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are to dyn­asts and over half of the tick­ets issued by Jiten Ram Man­jhi’s Hindus­tan Awam Morcha - Sec­u­lar (HAM-S), part of the BJP-led National Demo­cratic Alli­ance (NDA), have gone to his own fam­ily. Around 18% of the Bhar­atiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 101 can­did­ates are dyn­asts, as are 17% of part­ner Janata Dal United’s (JD-U) 101 .

Poll strategist and Jan Sur­aaj Party (JSP) founder Prashant Kis­hor has been hit­ting out at dyn­astic polit­ics but he too has fielded former Union min­is­ter RCP Singh’s daugh­ter Lata Singh from Asthawan and former Bihar CM Kar­poori Thakur’s grand­daugh­ter Jag­riti Thakur from Morwa.

“The most dyn­asts are in the RJD, BJP and the JD-U –– the three big parties. One can find son, daugh­ter, wife, son-in-law, daugh­ter-in-law, brother-in-law, even grand­chil­dren in the elect­oral fray. Accord­ing to a report, over 70 MLAs came from polit­ical fam­il­ies in 2020, with the max­imum from the RJD, though BJP and JD-U were not far behind,” said former dir­ector of AN Sinha Insti­tute of Social Stud­ies DM Diwakar.

“The most dyn­asts are in the RJD, BJP and the JD-U –– the three big parties. One can find son, daugh­ter, wife, son-in-law, daugh­ter-in-law, brother-in-law, even grand­chil­dren in the elect­oral fray. Accord­ing to a report, over 70 MLAs came from polit­ical fam­il­ies in 2020, with the max­imum from the RJD, though BJP and JD-U were not far behind,” said former dir­ector of AN Sinha Insti­tute of Social Stud­ies DM Diwakar.

In RJD, the Oppos­i­tion’s chief min­is­ter face Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who is the son of former CM Lalu Prasad, is con­test­ing from Rag­hopur, which he has already won three times. His elder brother Tej Pra­tap Yadav, expelled from the RJD, is con­test­ing from Mahua on the ticket of his own party, Jan­shakti Janata Dal.

The RJD’s other dyn­astic can­did­ates are the late Md Shahabud­din’s son Osama Shahab

smoke to above Pun­jab and parts of Jammu and Kash­mir.

But that is expec­ted to change after a west­ern dis­turb­ance passes through the region between Octo­ber 27-29, a period when farm fires in Pun­jab too are pre­dicted to surge.

“In the com­ing days, if stubble burn­ing on the Pun­jab side of Pakistan con­tin­ues, it actu­ally might impact Delhi’s air pol­lu­tion level as well,” said Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, former sec­ret­ary of the min­istry of Earth Sci­ences.

“We are expect­ing north­west­er­lies in the com­ing days and depend­ing on the wind speed, the par­tic­u­late mat­ters might be car­ried to the Cap­ital and neigh­bour­ing areas as well. This might cause a spike in pol­lu­tion level.”

“We are expect­ing north­west­er­lies in the com­ing days and depend­ing on the wind speed, the par­tic­u­late mat­ters might be car­ried to the Cap­ital and neigh­bour­ing areas as well. This might cause a spike in pol­lu­tion level.”

Every year, this com­bin­a­tion of farm fire smoke and local pol­lut­ants trapped by pre-winter met­eor­o­lo­gical factors com­bine to wreak on the national cap­ital region a pub­lic health emer­gency as the AQI often reaches well past 400.

Another met­eor­o­lo­gist con­curred. Ash­wary Tiwari, who runs India­Met­Sky, said there is “a big pos­sib­il­ity” the high farm fire count in Pakistan will impact air qual­ity across the Indo-Gan­getic Plain region once the West­ern Dis­turb­ance moves away.

“We are likely to see the impact of smoke and pol­lut­ants accu­mu­lat­ing over the Pakistan-Sindh region and parts of adja­cent north­west­ern India once the upcom­ing West­ern Dis­turb­ance moves away and north­west­erly-west­erly winds will set back over north­ern plains,” he said, adding that trans­port-level winds should be strong dur­ing this period.

“We are likely to see the impact of smoke and pol­lut­ants accu­mu­lat­ing over the Pakistan-Sindh region and parts of adja­cent north­west­ern India once the upcom­ing West­ern Dis­turb­ance moves away and north­west­erly-west­erly winds will set back over north­ern plains,” he said, adding that trans­port-level winds should be strong dur­ing this period.

Pakistan’s total Octo­ber fire count through Octo­ber 25 reached 5,908, the fourth-highest for that period in the past 13 years, accord­ing to NASA’s VIIRS satel­lite data. The fires have been heav­ily con­cen­trated in the second half of Octo­ber, with the 10-day period from Octo­ber 16-25 record­ing the highest count since 2012, sur­pass­ing even 2021’s spike of 3,492 fires.

The spike in Pakistan fires stands in stark con­trast to neigh­bour­ing Pun­jab, which is exper­i­en­cing its low­est burn­ing sea­son on record, till now. Pun­jab recor­ded only 498 fires dur­ing the same 10-day period end­ing Octo­ber 25, mark­ing the low­est count since 2012. For com­par­ison, 2016 saw 15,150 fires dur­ing the same period, while 2022 recor­ded 5,121 fires.

The spike in Pakistan fires stands in stark con­trast to neigh­bour­ing Pun­jab, which is exper­i­en­cing its low­est burn­ing sea­son on record, till now. Pun­jab recor­ded only 498 fires dur­ing the same 10-day period end­ing Octo­ber 25, mark­ing the low­est count since 2012. For com­par­ison, 2016 saw 15,150 fires dur­ing the same period, while 2022 recor­ded 5,121 fires.

For the full Octo­ber 1-25 period, Pun­jab has recor­ded just 661 fires com­pared to the 2012-2021 aver­age of 30,249 fires.

However, only 52.28% of the 3.17 mil­lion hec­tares under paddy cul­tiv­a­tion had been har­ves­ted by Sat­urday, accord­ing to the Pun­jab Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Board’s daily bul­letin.

“With only a little more than half of the paddy crop har­ves­ted and the win­dow for wheat sow­ing sea­son redu­cing, the next few days will likely see a surge in burn­ing as farm­ers rush to clear their fields within a lim­ited time,” said a Pun­jab Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Board offi­cial, ask­ing not to be named.

“With only a little more than half of the paddy crop har­ves­ted and the win­dow for wheat sow­ing sea­son redu­cing, the next few days will likely see a surge in burn­ing as farm­ers rush to clear their fields within a lim­ited time,” said a Pun­jab Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Board offi­cial, ask­ing not to be named.

This means there will be more PM2.5 in the atmo­sphere over north­w­est India, which can sweep in over the IndoGan­getic plains.

To be sure, this effect is likely to play out later in the com­ing week. For now, local weather con­di­tions may play a more sig­ni­fic­ant factor, as it did on Sat­urday.

“While the wind speed has not shown any drastic change on Sat­urday, the dir­ec­tion of the wind has been a bit mixed throughout the day, due to which pol­lu­tion from a lot of neigh­bour­ing areas like Guru­gram, Ghaziabad, Sonipat and Gautam Buddha Nagar have accu­mu­lated in the Cap­ital, lead­ing to a slight spike in pol­lu­tion level,” said Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead ana­lyst at the think-tank Envirocata­lysts.

“While the wind speed has not shown any drastic change on Sat­urday, the dir­ec­tion of the wind has been a bit mixed throughout the day, due to which pol­lu­tion from a lot of neigh­bour­ing areas like Guru­gram, Ghaziabad, Sonipat and Gautam Buddha Nagar have accu­mu­lated in the Cap­ital, lead­ing to a slight spike in pol­lu­tion level,” said Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead ana­lyst at the think-tank Envirocata­lysts.

The delayed har­vest pat­tern mir­rors last year’s sea­son, which saw Pun­jab record 31,023 total fires for Octo­ber-Novem­ber. In 2023, there was an unusual spike in mid-Novem­ber with fire counts reach­ing around 1,700 daily on Novem­ber 14-16, a period that typ­ic­ally shows declin­ing num­bers.

Mahesh Palawat, vice pres­id­ent at Sky­met Weather, explained that cur­rent met­eor­o­lo­gical con­di­tions have pre­ven­ted Pakistan fires from affect­ing Delhi. “Right now, the affect­ing Delhi. “Right now, the wind dir­ec­tion is west to east and wind speed is almost calm,” he said.

“The con­tri­bu­tion of stubble burn­ing to pol­lu­tion is highly depend­ent on met­eor­o­lo­gical con­di­tions like wind dir­ec­tion and wind speed.”

Fol­low­ing the West­ern Dis­turb­ance, which Palawat said --- in what is sim­ilar to Tiwari’s and Rajeevan’s con­ten­tion -wind pat­terns will shift to north­west­er­lies, poten­tially car­ry­ing smoke from Pakistan toward Delhi and sur­round­ing areas. He added the west­ern dis­turb­ance is expec­ted to bring cloud­ing to the plains and light rain and snow­fall to the hills

Tiwari warned that once the pol­lu­tion arrives, “the effects should mod­er­ately be felt as AQI levels will spike. The pol­lu­tion will mar­gin­ally get bet­ter in the after­noon and spike dur­ing morn­ing and night hours. Other effects will include a hazy-grey sky, due to smoke and soot hov­er­ing between 1,000 to 6,000 feet in the lower atmo­sphere, thus par­tially block­ing sun­shine.”

Tiwari warned that once the pol­lu­tion arrives, “the effects should mod­er­ately be felt as AQI levels will spike. The pol­lu­tion will mar­gin­ally get bet­ter in the after­noon and spike dur­ing morn­ing and night hours. Other effects will include a hazy-grey sky, due to smoke and soot hov­er­ing between 1,000 to 6,000 feet in the lower atmo­sphere, thus par­tially block­ing sun­shine.”