Muslims have a share of 16.9% of Bihar’s population according to the 2011 census. The number is broadly the same in the 2023 caste survey conducted by the Bihar government.
How have Muslims been represented in the state legislature over the years? Has Muslim representation changed with the changing politics in Bihar? Which parties have given the maximum representation to Muslims in Bihar assembly? We answer this question by looking at the database of all 3,629 MLAs Bihar has had
- Share of Muslim MLAs in Bihar has varied from 6%-12%The Bihar assembly had 239 MLAs until 1972. This number has increased to 243 since 1977. To be sure, undivided Bihar used to have 324 assembly constituencies, but this analysis has left out the ACs that became a part of Jharkhand when it was created in 2000. The number of Muslim MLAs as a share of all MLAs has had a high and low of 11.5% and 6.6% in the 1985 and 2005 (October) assembly elections in Bihar. The highest share of Muslim MLAs was in the election held in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, which the Congress won with almost a two-thirds majority. The lowest share of Muslim MLAs was in the assembly election where an alliance of the Janata Dal (United) with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) captured power for the first time in the state in 2005. To be sure, the BJP’s predecessor, the Jan Sangh was part of some coalition governments in the state between 1967 and 1972, but the Janata Dal (United) and BJP government formed in October 2005 was the first government with BJP to complete a full term.
- Intra-state distribution of Muslim MLAs is skewed like the Muslim population in the state…As is often the case in states, the Muslim population in Bihar is not uniformly distributed across the state. According to the district-wise breakup of religious population in the 2011 census, almost 40% of the state’s Muslim population was in just six districts, which accounted for just under 20% of the state’s overall population. If one were to compare the cumulative district-wise share of Muslim MLAs in Bihar, there is a broad overlap between districts with the highest Muslim population share and the highest share of Muslim MLAs.
- …And the skew was the highest in the 2020 electionsBihar can be broadly divided into seven major sub-regions. Seemanchal, which comprises four districts—Araria, Katihar, Purnia, and Kishanganj — has the highest share of the Muslim population . The number of Muslim MLAs from Seemanchal has remained broadly stable over the years, but its share in the total number of Muslim MLAs in the state has increased when overall Muslim representation has come down in the assembly. This number was the highest in the 2020 elections when 60% of the state’s Muslim MLAs came from just one sub-region, which sends just 9.9% of all MLAs in the assembly. The fact that three of the top five elections by share of Muslim MLAs from Seemanchal have been post-1990 suggests that Muslim politics has undergone a ghettoisation of sorts in the state with more Muslim MLAs being elected from a part of the state which has the highest share of Muslim population.
- Among the major parties, RJD and Congress have the highest relative share of Muslim MLAsOut of the 312 Muslim MLAs elected so far, 130 and 57 won from the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). However, to ascertain Muslim representation of lack of it within parties, relative share of Muslim MLAs – share of a party’s Muslim MLAs divided by its share of total MLAs -- is a better measure because not all parties have had the same number of MLAs in Bihar. The RJD and Congress have the highest relative share of Muslim MLAs while BJP, as expected, has the lowest. However, what is most interesting is the fact that the other smaller parties have the highest relative share of Muslim MLAs in the state. For example, even in the 2020 assembly elections in the state, five of the 19 Muslim MLAs in the state were elected from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. To be sure,four out of the five AIMIM’s MLAs joined the RJD in 2022. Whether or not the number of Muslim MLAs increases in the new assembly in Bihar remains to be seen. However, what is clear from the analysis given above is the fact that Muslims have had lower than proportional representation in the Bihar assembly most of the time. While the more recent explanation is that they’ve largely been represented/given tickets from only one side of the political spectrum since the rise of the BJP as a political force in the state, their under representation in the pre-BJP period suggests that the factors behind their lower than proportionate representation in the state legislative are more structural in nature.
Nishant Ranjan has been working as a data journalist with Hindustan Times since 2023. In this short period, he has established a niche for creating original datasets and utilising them to produce journalistic work that pushes the boundaries of journalism. The list of datasets and stories done by him include the following: a dataset of all 717 chief ministers India has had since 1952, a dataset of all 3,350 members of India’s council of ministers, a dataset of all 190 deputy chief ministers in India and a dataset of all 279 Supreme Court judges in India (1950-2025). He has also profiled each elected Muslim MLA/MP since 1952. He is a mining engineer by training who decided to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from TISS after working in a coal mine for 10 months. He also worked as a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research, researching local governance in India. He also has a keen interest in analyzing electoral politics and political executives in India.
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.