With just a day left for filing of nomination papers for elections to the Bihar legislative council, the BJP on Wednesday announced the names of its two candidates, an upper caste and an OBC Nishad. The names of Anil Sharma and Hari Sahni were announced at the party’s national headquarters in Delhi.
Sharma, a Bhumihar from Jehanabad, has been with the party for more than 20 years and has held important responsibilities in the state unit as well as the Kisan Morcha. Sahni, who belongs to the Nishad community of fishermen, hails from Darbhanga where he has headed the district unit and also unsuccessfully contested assembly polls from the Bahadurpur seat.
Sahni’s candidature is also being seen as an attempt to offset the damage caused to the BJP by the short shrift given to Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) founder Mukesh Sahni, a Bollywood set designer turned politician who uses the nickname “son of mallah” and created some buzz around himself. Mukesh Sahni was brought into the NDA after a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the thick of the 2020 assembly polls. Though he lost his own seat, he was inducted into the Nitish Kumar cabinet at the instance of BJP which also got him elected to the legislative council.
The VIP founding chief, whose membership of the council expires shortly, has been left in the lurch with the BJP getting him expelled from the cabinet a few months ago and weaning away all three MLAs of his party. Although the BJP has been blaming Sahni’s vitriolic campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, during assembly polls in the adjoining state, for the fallout, the development seems to have not gone down well with the Nishads who have a sizeable population in the densely populated north Bihar.
The NDA in Bihar, which also includes Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), is contesting four out of the seven council seats where biennial elections are underway. The opposition RJD has fielded its candidates for the remaining three seats. All NDA candidates are likely to file their nomination papers on Thursday.
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