Sushant Singh Rajput’s cousin Divya Gautam is CPI-ML candidate for Patna’s Digha

Divya Gautam said she may have differed ideologically with Sushant Singh Rajput, but culturally both of them were bound by the same thread

PATNA: Divya Gautam, 34, cousin of late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, on Wednesday filed her nomination as the candidate of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPI-ML from Patna’s Digha assembly constituency.

CPI-ML candidate Divya Gautam after filling her nomination paper ahead of Bihar Assembly Election 2025 at Collectorate in Patna, on Wednesday. (Santosh Kumar/ Hindustan Times)

To be sure, the Opposition Mahagathbandhan alliance, which the CPI-ML is a part of, has yet to finalise its seat-sharing formula or candidate list for the two-phase polls scheduled to be held on November 6 and 11.

“Please ask my leaders about the seat-sharing. My party asked me to file a nomination from Digha, and I did,” Divya Gautam said, sidestepping questions on the alliance dynamics.

A theatre practitioner and academic, Divya Gautam had declined to join government service as a supply inspector after cracking the Bihar Public Service Commission examination in 2021.

She said she may have differed ideologically with SSR, but culturally both of them were bound by the same thread.

“I see my cousin Sushant bhaiya as an artist. Ideologically we may have differed, but culturally we are bound by the same thread. I’m currently working on a Hamlet production as a tribute to him,” she said, interacting with CPI-ML workers during a ‘jan sampark’ (mass connect) programme after filing her nomination.

A former assistant professor of journalism at Patna Women’s College (2011–14), Divya Gautam’s brush with politics began during her student days when she contested the 2012 Patna University Students’ Union election as an AISA candidate, narrowly losing to ABVP’s Ashish Sinha. “That election changed me as a person,” she recalled, alleging that “money, power and negative mobilisation” tilted the result.

Since then, she has remained active in student and women’s movements through AISA and AIPWA, particularly during the 2012 Nirbhaya protests and campaigns for gender justice. A postgraduate in Women’s Studies from TISS, Hyderabad, she has also worked with women in urban slums in Patna and Delhi on issues of sexual harassment, gender issues and women’s empowerment.

“Women and youth are on top of my agenda,” Divya Gautam said, citing waterlogging, traffic congestion, and unemployment as key concerns in Digha. “Contractual jobs have eroded job and health security. The NDA government has done practically nothing for the youth in the last two decades.”

Born to Bhupendra Kumar Singh and Lalita Singh, she lost her mother at 26 — a turning point that, she says, steeled her resolve to fight harder.

As she steps into electoral fray, Divya Gautam embodies both the continuity of her family’s public legacy and the emergence of a new Left voice seeking space in Bihar’s complex political theatre.