All six Rajya Sabha candidates from Bihar were elected unopposed to the Upper House of Parliament on Tuesday comprising two members each from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), along with one each from Janata Dal (United) and Congress.
The BJP fielded its State vice-president Bhim Singh and president of State women’s wing president Dharmsheela Gupta (from the Extremely Backward Class and Other Backward Class, respectively) while the RJD nominated Manoj Jha and Sanjay Yadav, political advisor of party leader Tejashwi Yadav, into the fray.
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State Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh, a sitting parliamentarian, stood in the election again while the JD(U) went with Sanjay Jha, who is a close associate of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, for the Rajya Sabha. Mr. Jha has also been Minister in the Cabinet of the previous mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) government led by Mr. Kumar from August 2022 to January 2024.
Both Mr. Jha and Mr. Yadav had filed their nomination papers on February 15 in the presence of party chief Lalu Prasad, his wife and former Chief Minister Rabri Devi, their younger son and former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, and other party leaders. Sanjay Jha, the JD(U) leader, filed his nomination papers in the presence of Mr. Kumar and after being elected to the Rajya Sabha, held a “courtesy meeting” with the Chief Minister on Tuesday. The tenure of all Rajya Sabha members would begin after April 6.
Earlier, there were rumours in the State’s political circle that the ruling NDA might field a fourth candidate to queer the pitch for the RJD-Congress coalition but, it was not done and strongly denied by State BJP president Samrat Choudhary, who is currently Deputy Chief Minister in the newly formed NDA government headed by Mr. Kumar.
Earlier, the terms of six MPs — Bashistha Narayan Singh and Anil Hegde from JD(U); Sushil Kumar Modi (BJP); Manoj Kumar Jha and Ashfaq Karim (RJD); and State Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh — had fallen vacant.
