Former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi is among the candidates announced by the Rashtriya Janata Dal on Friday for the State Legislative Council election, slated to be held on March 21. The party’s other candidates are former State Finance Minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui, the former State president of the party’s women’s wing Urmila Thakur, and the party’s national general secretary Faisal Ali.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) has fielded its women’s wing leader Sashi Yadav as the party’s nominee for the election. There is no candidate from the Congress party this time under the mahagathbandhan, or the Opposition’s grand alliance.
The RJD’s State chief Jagdanand Singh released the list of the mahagathbandhan candidates. In fact, Mr. Singh’s name was also doing the rounds for this election, but party sources told The Hindu that he withdrew his candidature after the RJD’s top leadership assured him of a Lok Sabha ticket for his son Sudhakar Singh, who was a former State Agriculture Minister under the mahagathbandhan government. However, he was forced to resign from his post after he flagged corruption in his department and slammed Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on several occasions.
Eye on LS poll
Of the RJD candidates, Ms. Devi is also the wife of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, while Mr. Ali had lost the 2019 Lok Sabha election from the Sheohar seat. Ms. Thakur comes from Begusarai district and belongs to an Extremely Backward Class (EBC) community. “The party has announced names of candidates from the OBC, EBC and Muslim communities, apparently with an eye on the upcoming Lok Sabha election,” said a senior party leader who did not want to be named.
The CPI-ML is hoping its candidate, Ms. Yadav, will become the first ever party member to win a seat in the Bihar legislature’s Upper House. With just 12 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar Assembly, the CPI-ML will need the support of other mahagathbandhan coalition partners to win the seat, as the votes of at least 21 MLAs are required to win a seat in the Upper House. The other two Left parties, the CPI and the CPI-M, have two MLAs each in the State Assembly.
The CPI-ML also announced that it would contest the Koderma Lok Sabha seat in neighboring Jharkhand State.
Congress left in the cold
Significantly, the Congress has not been given even a single seat under the mahagathbandhan coalition for representation in the Upper House. Senior leader Prem Chandra Mishra was the Congress representative in the legislative council, but his term will expire on May 6. The party has 19 MLAs in the State Assembly, but two of them — Murari Prasad Gautam and Siddharth Saurav — have recently switched loyalties, sitting with NDA legislators in the Assembly.
“Yes, the party feels hurt for not being taken along under the mahagathbandhan alliance for the State Legislative Council poll. However, only our top party leadership would take a call on this,” said a senior party leader and former MLC.
CM to contest seat again
The biennial poll for 11 State Legislative Council seats, including the seats held by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and former CM Ms. Devi, will take place on March 21. Of the 11 outgoing legislators, three are from the BJP — Mangal Pandey, Sanjay Paswan, and Shahnawaz Hussain — while the Congress holds only the single seat of Prem Chandra Mishra.
Sanjay Kumar Jha, a JD(U) member of the Council, was recently elected to the Rajya Sabha, and the terms of JD(U) MLCs Rameshwar Mahto and Khalid Anwar are also ending. Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAMS) leader Santosh Kumar Suman, currently a State Cabinet Minister, is also completing his tenure. The son of party chief and former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi, Mr. Suman has filed his papers to contest the seat again.
The NDA is expected to win six of the 11 seats, while five are likely to go to the kitty of the mahagathbandhan. The BJP, though, has not yet announced the names of its candidates. Mr. Kumar and Khalid Anwar of the JD(U) have already filed their papers for the poll.
