Bihar elections: Did Chirag Paswan’s LJP just score a win in Bihar’s Sugauli seat even before the Assembly elections?

In a major setback for the Opposition INDI Alliance in Bihar, the Opposition lost its first  seat even before the Bihar elections, after the nomination of its candidate for Sugauli, Shashi Bhushan Singh, was rejected by the Election Commission officials.

Sugauli sitting MLA Singh had filed papers to contest for the seat, but as a  Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) candidate.

According to local media reports, since VIP has not been registered as a regional party, norms have it that he file the papers with 10 proposers. However,  Singh went by the norms followed by RJD, which is a regional party, by including only one proposer. After scrutiny, his nomination was rejected on the grounds that the number of proposers was not sufficient.

Interestingly, the nomination paper of RJD rebel Om Prakash Chaudhary has also been cancelled. He reportedly left several pages blank in the nomination form.

That has left the battle a two-pronged one, between NDA candidate Bablu Gupta of the LJP, and a relatively weaker candidate of the Jan Suraaj party. According to political experts, the current situation is highly beneficial for the NDA candidate.

The shocking development has brought gloom to the Grand Alliance camp as the seat was a stronghold of the RJD and INDI Alliance. The seat that falls in the West Champaran constituency broke a trend when it elected Shashi Bhushan Singh in 2020, after three consecutive wins by the BJP’s Ramchandra Sahni. Before that, the Congress had won the seat three times.

The electorate consists of Muslims at 23.40% and Scheduled Castes at 11.22%.

 

India