Bihar Council polls: All 3 RJD nominees file papers, all eyes on NDA

The RJD candidates for all three Bihar Legislative Council seats that the party is contesting, out of the seven going to vote on June 20, filed their nominations on Monday, even as the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was yet to announce candidates for the four seats it hopes to win.

Patna The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidates for all three Bihar Legislative Council seats that the party is contesting, out of the seven going to vote on June 20, filed their nominations on Monday, even as the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was yet to announce candidates for the four seats it hopes to win.

RJD candidate Ashok Pandey files his nomination papers for MLC elections at Bihar Vidhan Sabha, in Patna on Monday. (Santosh Kumar/HT Photo)

RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his younger son and leader of opposition in Bihar, Tejaswhi Prasad Yadav, accompanied the candidates — Munni Rajak, party’s youth wing president Qari Sohaib and Ashok Kumar Pandey — to the Vidhan Sabha when they filed their nominations.

RJD was the first to announce the names of its candidates, though it initially did not go down well with its allies, the Congress and the CPI-ML, which were hoping to get one of the three seats.

The smaller allies are said to have relented later. “Congress’s Rajya Sabha member Akhilesh Prasad Singh and party’s legislature party leader Ajeet Sharma had talks with RJD chief Lalu Prasad and the matter has been sorted out. The RJD chief also had talks with the CPI-ML leader Deepankar Bhattacharya in this regard,” said a senior Congress leader.

The seven seats going to vote are falling vacant next month. June 9 is the last date for filing nominations.

As per numbers, RJD can win two seats on its own while it would need support of Congress and CPI-ML to win the third seat. In the ruling NDA, BJP can win two on its own while JD-U can win one. For each seat, 31 votes are required. In the Assembly, BJP has 77 seats, RJD 76 and the JD-U 45.

However, both parties would require additional support to win the fourth seat.

According to sources, BJP wanted it to be 3-1 and the party’s state unit president Dr Sanjay Jaiswal said it a few days ago. However, BJP is unlikely to push hard for it due to growing assertiveness of JD-U, as it did during the Council elections for 24 seats earlier this year. “It should be 2-2 between BJP and JD-U. Both parties will amicably settle the 50:50 formula,” said senior JD-U leader and minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav.

JD-U wants two seats for itself, which it can have if the 15 additional votes of BJP go in its favour, as it already has the support of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM, which has four seats in the state assembly.

The biggest challenge is for JD-U, which held five of the seven seats up for grabs. It can get a maximum of two seats and so who are denied ticket and who are preferred will be a thing to watch.

Those JD-U leaders whose term is ending in the Legislative Council are Gulam Rasool, Rannvijay Kumar Singh, Rohini Nazis, CP Sinha and Qamar Alam.

Two others whose term will end on July 21 include former Bihar minister Mukesh Sahni, whose party’s all three MLAs joined BJP earlier this year, and Arjun Sahani from BJP.