The Wire‘s team of reporters who have been covering the lead up to the assembly elections in Bihar met at Muzaffarpur on Tuesday, a day ahead of the first phase of polling. While Manoj Singh came down to the city from the northern parts of the state, Ajoy Ashirwad reached the second biggest town in Bihar after reporting from south and central Bihar.

Manoj Singh said for the people of at least 22 districts of the state, facing the devastation caused by floods has become an annual phenomenon. He said that political parties make the construction of embankments in these regions their poll issues. But hundreds of villages between the embankments, he said, have been pushed into a state of ‘permanent waterlogging’. He then went on to say that migrant workers who had walked all the way from many of the country’s cities when the COVID-19 lockdown was imposed are all going back in search of work. He said none of the relief measures that the Nitish Kumar government promised was fulfilled. Later, he spoke about some of the stories he did for The Wire.