A day after Congress replaced its Godda candidate Deepika Pandey Singh with Poreyahat MLA Pradeep Yadav, BJP’s outgoing MP from the unreserved seat, Nishikant Dubey, announced on Monday that he will no longer need to actively campaign as his victory is now assured, indicating that his opposition candidate is quite weak.
Yadav, who had earlier said only he could beat Dubey, did not respond to the BJP candidate’s latest barb and attended the hearing of a sexual harassment case filed against him by a woman functionary of the now-defunct JVM-P in Deoghar in 2019 while they were its members.
He had also suffered back-to-back defeats in the hands of Dubey as a JVM-P candidate in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Asserting that Yadav’s candidature will not be well-received by voters as his history of switching parties and his alleged involvement in the sexual harassment case, Dubey boasted, “I will abstain from campaigning except when top party leaders arrive. If Congress names Pradeep Yadav as its candidate from Godda then my party cadres will take command of my campaigning. I will spend my time relishing tea, food and watching cricket.”
Dubey said he will refuse to campaign against someone he considers a rape accused. The outgoing BJP MP shared a video clip from Yadav’s 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign in which the JVM-P candidate had said, “I will take my defeat this time to have been not liked by the electorates of Godda and this will be my last electoral journey from here.”
Sharing the video, Dubey questioned whether he should also campaign against a candidate with a “significant discrepancy between his words and actions”.
When asked about Dubey’s decision to abstain from individual campaigning, Yadav refused to respond and expressed his desire to represent Godda to highlight the plight of the local people.
