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.
