BJP drops veteran Nand Kishore Yadav, fields Deputy CM and Ram Kripal Yadav

Patna/ New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday announced its first list of 71 candidates for the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections, unveiling a mix of continuity and change that saw several senior leaders sidelined and new entrants rewarded. Among the most notable omissions was Nand Kishore Yadav, the seven-term MLA and Speaker of the outgoing Assembly, who was denied a ticket after nearly three decades in electoral politics.

In a significant move, Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary will contest a direct election after more than ten years. Choudhary, who last won an Assembly seat from Parbatta in 2010 on a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) ticket, has been fielded from Tarapur. Health and Law Minister Mangal Pandey, currently a member of the Legislative Council, will also fight the Assembly polls from Siwan.

Both Choudhary and Pandey are former presidents of the BJP’s Bihar unit — a distinction shared with Yadav, who has been replaced in Patna Sahib by Sanjay Kumar Gupta, a relatively low-profile state secretary.

Reacting to the decision, Yadav, 72, took to social media to say, “I stand with the decision taken by the BJP. I have no complaints. I welcome the new generation of leadership.” Yadav, first elected from Patna East in 1995 — later renamed Patna Sahib after delimitation in 2008 — was considered one of the last of the party’s veteran stalwarts from the Sushil Kumar Modi era.

A surprise addition to the list is former Union minister Ram Kripal Yadav, who joined the BJP in 2014 after parting ways with RJD chief Lalu Prasad. Having twice defeated Lalu’s daughter Misa Bharti in Patliputra before losing last year’s general election, he will now contest from Danapur, currently held by RJD’s Reet Lal Yadav.

Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Kumar Sinha has been renominated from Lakhisarai, where he won three consecutive terms. Other ministers retaining their seats include Renu Devi (Bettiah), Nitin Nabin (Bankipur), Nitish Mishra (Jhanjharpur), Jibesh Mishra (Jale), Sanjay Saraogi (Darbhanga), Neeraj Kumar Singh Bablu (Chhatapur), and Kedar Prasad Gupta (Kurhani). Art and Culture Minister Motilal Prasad has been dropped, with his Riga seat going to Baidyanath Prasad.

BJP insiders said around ten sitting MLAs have been denied re-nomination. One of them, former minister Ram Surat Rai, lost his Aurai seat to Rama Nishad, who joined the BJP recently along with her husband Ajay Nishad, a former Muzaffarpur MP. The move triggered protests at the party’s Patna office, where supporters alleged that a Union minister from the Yadav community had orchestrated Rai’s exclusion. “Give the ticket to Ram Surat Rai, else the BJP will not get even 10,000 votes in Aurai,” some women supporters shouted outside the office.

The list also includes nine women candidates, among them shooter-turned-politician Shreyasi Singh, who will contest again from Jamui. The BJP has also rewarded recent defectors, including Siddharth Saurav—who won Bikram on a Congress ticket in 2020—and has now been fielded from the same seat a day after joining the BJP.

Former JD(U) MP Sunil Kumar Pintu and retired civil servant Sujit Kumar Singh, both of whom joined the BJP on Monday, have been given tickets from Sitamarhi and Gaura Bauram, respectively.