CPI to field candidate from Begusarai in Bihar snubbing Cong's Kanhaiya Kumar

Patna: Former CPI MLA Awadhesh Rai will be Mahagathbandhan's candidate from the Begusarai Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, the party's general secretary D Raja announced here on Friday.

Raja also made it clear that his party wanted "at least one more seat" out of 40 in the state, but did not go into specifics.

Raja, who admitted to having met RJD president Lalu Prasad earlier in the day and the latter's son Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday evening, maintained that the Mahagathbandhan was "united" in Bihar, parrying questions on the coalition's inability to jointly announce a seat-sharing formula.

Notably, the candidature of Rai, an OBC and a two-term MLA from Bachhwara, indicates the Left party's intent to make the most of ally RJD's solid "MY" (Muslim-Yadav) support base.

A seat which has always elected an upper caste Bhumihar, except in 2009 when JD(U)'s Monazir Hassan broke the trend, Begusarai is at present held by Union minister Giriraj Singh who is likely to be fielded by the BJP again.

In 2019, Singh won the seat by a margin of more than four lakh votes, despite a spirited fight by former JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was then the CPI candidate. The young leader could not hold his own in a triangular contest which saw RJD's Tanveer Hassan slicing away close to two lakh votes.