Bihar: 1.5 crore voters, 86 candidates in fray in 6th phase of LS polls

Patna: About 1.5 crore voters across eight Lok Sabha constituencies of Bihar will decide the fate of 86 candidates on Friday in the sixth and penultimate phase of general elections.

The seats going to polls are Valmiki Nagar, Pashchim Champaran, Purbi Champaran, Sheohar, Siwan, Gopalganj, Maharajganj and Vaishali, and the phase brings to a close voting for all parliamentary constituencies in the state north of the Ganges.

Of these, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) is contesting four seats, including Sheohar, which was won by the BJP five years ago.

The primary contest in Sheohar is between Lovely Anand, whom the JD(U) has fielded hoping to cash in on the popularity her family is said to enjoy among upper caste Rajputs, and RJD's Ritu Jaiswal who is tapping into the resentment among Vaishyas, traditionally BJP supporters, following denial of a ticket to sitting MP Rama Devi who had won the seat many times.

In Siwan, the pitch has been queered for JD(U) and RJD with the entry, as an Independent, of Hina Shahab, whose husband late Mohd Shahabuddin had won the seat several times.

The JD(U), in a bid to avoid showing an excessive pro-upper caste tilt and consolidate its OBC base, has denied the ticket to sitting MP Kavita Singh and fielded a greenhorn Vijaylakshmi Kushwaha.

The RJD candidate Awadh Bihari Chaudhary is a veteran leader, a several term MLA and also a former assembly Speaker.

In Valmiki Nagar, the JD(U) has reposed its trust in sitting MP Sunil Kumar, who had made his debut in a by-election in 2020 necessitated by the death of his father Baidyanath Mahto.

His principal challenger is RJD's Deepak Yadav, who joined the party after quitting the BJP and whose candidature is being seen as an attempt to upset traditional caste equations in the constituency.

The JD(U) has also reposed its trust in its sitting MP in Gopalganj, a reserved seat, where Alok Suman’s bid to seek re-election has been challenged by Premnath Chanchal of Vikassheel Insan Party (VIP).

A local businessman with political ambitions, Chanchal banks on the support of RJD, with which his fledgling party entered into an alliance ahead of the general elections.

The BJP is contesting three of the eight seats going to polls in sixth phase, including Pashchim Champaran, where former state president Sanjay Jaiswal is aiming at a fourth consecutive win.

Jaiswal’s principal challenger is Madan Mohan Tiwari of the Congress, a former MLA from Bettiah, named after the town where Pashchim Champaran district is headquartered.

In Purbi Champaran, several-term MP Radha Mohan Singh, a former Union minister, is said to have got a ticket, despite the party’s preference for candidates well below the age of 75, thanks to his proximity with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The opposition candidate here is VIP's Rajesh Kushwaha, who was formerly with RJD and whose candidature is being seen as an attempt at OBC consolidation to take on Singh, an upper caste Rajput.

The BJP has also backed sitting MP Janardan Singh Sigriwal in his seat of Maharajganj. Sigriwal's bid to score a hat-trick is being challenged by Akash Prasad Singh of the Congress, whose father Akhilesh Prasad Singh is a Rajya Sabha MP and heads the party’s state unit.

The Congress' choice of a Bhumihar candidate is understood to have been aimed at playing upon the powerful upper caste group's decades-old rivalry with Rajputs.

The rivalry between Rajputs and Bhumihars is also at play in adjoining Vaishali, where Veena Devi's bid to retain the seat faces a daunting challenge from Vijay Kumar Shukla of RJD.

Veena Devi had won the seat in 2019 on an LJP ticket and she was the only MP lucky enough to be considered for a ticket by Chirag Paswan despite having sided with the latter's uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras when the party suffered a split.

Shukla is a local muscleman and a several-term former MLA who has formerly been with both LJP and JD(U) and whose candidature is being seen as yet another attempt by the RJD to turn NDA's equations on the head.

Of the 1.49 crore voters who will exercise their franchise on Friday, 71.08 lakh are women. Gopalganj accounts for the highest number of 20.24 lakh voters while the smallest electorate (17.56 lakh) is in Pashchim Champaran.

Altogether more than 33 lakh voters are less than 30 years of age, 2.12 lakh of them falling in the age group of 18-19 years.

The constituencies going to polls are also overwhelmingly rural, as evident from the fact that out of 14,872 polling stations, only 1,281 falls in urban areas.