The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Saturday announced names of candidates for 39 of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. The candidate for the seat in Khagaria, which has gone to the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), has been left out as LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan said there were several claimants to it.
BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, who had contested from the Bhagalpur seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll but was defeated by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Bulo Mandal, has been dropped this time.
Social mix
A good mix of social compulsions is also seen in the list. — 13 seats have gone to upper caste candidates, 12 to Other Backward Classes (OBC), seven to Economically Backward Classes (EBC) and six to Scheduled Castes (SC).
One seat — Kishanganj — has been given to a Muslim candidate, Mehmood Ashraf, from the JD(U)’s quota.
Of the 17 seats in its quota, the BJP has fielded 10 upper castes candidates, five OBC candidates, one EBC candidate and one SC candidate. Similarly, the JD(U), too, has tried to balance caste composition by six tickets each to OBC and EBC candidates. It has also fielded two upper caste, two SC and one Muslim candidate.
As was widely expected, rebel BJP MP from Patna Sahib Shatrughan Sinha, too, was out of the NDA list. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has replaced Mr. Sinha. The latter is likely to join the Congress in the coming days, and is expected to contest from the Patna Sahib seat against Mr. Prasad. Both Mr. Sinha and Mr. Prasad belong to the upper caste Kayastha community, which has a sizeable presence in this BJP stronghold constituency.
Five sitting BJP MPs — Satish Chandra Dubey from Valmikinagar, Janak Ram from Gopalgunj, Om Prakash Yadav from Siwan, Birendra Chaudhury from Jhanjharpur and Hari Manjhi from Gaya (reserved) seats — have been dropped, too, as these seats have gone to the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) kitty under the alliance’s seat distribution.
