November 13 will be a very important date for Bihar’s newest political party – Jan Suraaj Party, led by election manager-turned-politician Prashant Kishor. For it is on November 13 that voters in four Assembly seats, where bypoll was necessitated due to election of the earlier MLAs from these seats to the Lok Sabha, will cast their votes.
Apart from the Jan Suraaj party, established parties like JDU, RJD, BJP and CPI-ML are also in the race. Kishor has repeatedly asserted that before contesting all 243 seats in the Assembly elections next year, his party would make major parties bite the dust in the upcoming bypolls itself.
The four seats where byelections are being held are Tarari, Ramgarh, Belaganj and Imaganj.
BJP’s candidate in Tarari seats in Vishal Prashant, son of strongman and four-time MLA from the seat Narendra Kumar Pandey alias Sunil Kumar Pandey. He faces a tough fight from CPI-ML’s Raju Yadav. The party had won the seat in 2020. The Jan Suraaj Party had nominated Lt Gen Sri Krishna Singh (retd) but later replaced him with Kiran Singh due to eligibility issues.
The seat has 1.5 lakh upper-caste voters, along with 25,000 Muslims, 15,000 Kushwahas, 30,000 Yadavs and 50,000 Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) voters.
In Ramgarh, a traditional RJD stronghold, the seat fell vacant after RJD’s Sudhakar Singh won the Buxar Lok Sabha seat. RJD has fielded Ajit Kumar Singh, Sudhakar Singh’s brother, who has the endorsement of prominent RJD leaders, including Tejashwi Yadav. Representing the Mahagathbandhan, Ajit Singh faces BJP’s Ashok Kumar Singh and Jan Suraaj Party’s Sushil Singh Kushwaha, a candidate from the Kushwaha community in the area.
In Belaganj, left vacant after RJD’s Surendra Prasad Yadav won the Jehanabad Lok Sabha seat, RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh, son of Surendra Prasad Yadav, will compete against JD(U)’s Manorama Devi, who is linked to the infamous 2016 Gaya road rage incident through her son, Rocky Yadav. Jan Suraaj Party’s Mohammad Amjad has quietly positioned himself as a third contender in Belaganj, capturing voter interest with his grassroots campaigning and positioning himself as an alternative to the established parties.
Lastly, Imamganj, a reserved constituency, which fell vacant after Jiten Ram Manjhi of Hindustani AwamMorcha-Secular (HAM-S), an NDA ally, won from Gaya Lok Sabha seat and joined the Narendra Modi Cabinet as Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. In his place, HAM-S has fielded Manjhi’s daughter-in-law Deepa Santosh Manjhi, hoping to retain the seat within the family. She faces strong opposition from RJD’s Raushan Kumar Manjhi, a member of the INDIA bloc, and Jan Suraaj Party’s Jitendra Paswan, a popular paediatrician.
