PATNA: Former Union minister RCP Singh-led newly floated party ‘Aap Sabki Aawaz’ has announced to contest 140 of the total 243 seats in the Bihar assembly elections due next year. Singh’s party is the second political outfit that has been formed ahead of the assembly polls. Earlier, Prashant Kishor launched his ‘Jan Suraaj Party’, which is set to make a debut in electoral politics by contesting four seats in bypolls to be held on November 13.“There seems to be similarity with the Jan Suraaj Party, as both are highlighting backwardness and talk about making the future of the youth better. For example, Kishor and RCP Singh intend to lift prohibition if voted to power,” said a political activist, Rajiv Kumar Singh.Singh, a former IAS officer and once considered as political successor of Nitish, will eat into the votes of the JD(U) in the elections. Also, he comes from the same district and caste that Nitish Kumar belongs to.Taking a dig at the poor education system, RCP said, “The deterioration in government-run institutions is an open secret. I have observed it from my student days. I cracked the civil services exams without reservation and with no private coaching.”Targeting the Nitish government over alleged “improper enforcement of prohibition,” the bureaucrat-turned-politician claimed that people across Bihar were consuming spurious liquors in different ways, and the government has been suffering revenue losses worth thousands of crores.An UP-cadre officer, Singh had first come in contact with Nitish when he was posted as private secretary to then Union minister Beni Prasad Verma in 1996. Their relationship turned sour after Singh joined the Modi cabinet 2.0 in 2021.
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