Bihar RS elections: Voting likely after decade as CM, 5 others nominate for five seats

Patna: After over a decade-long gap, Bihar is heading towards voting in the Rajya Sabha elections, as six candidates, including Bihar CM and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar, and BJP president Nitin Nabin, filed nomination papers on Thursday against five seats in the Upper House from the state.The last time the Rajya Sabha elections in Bihar required “voting” and candidates could not win unopposed was in the by-election in 2014. Since then, every biennial and by-election for the Rajya Sabha in Bihar has been decided unopposed, as the number of candidates fielded by political parties typically matched the number of vacancies, preventing a contest.This time, among the six candidates who filed papers against the five seats, five are from the ruling NDA, while one candidate is from the opposition RJD.

“If all six candidates remain in the fray, voting will be held on March 16,” an official of the Bihar assembly said.Besides Nitish and Nitin, other NDA candidates who filed their nominations were Union minister Ram Nath Thakur of the JD(U), who aims at a hat-trick in the Upper House, Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) president Upendra Kushwaha, who seeks a second consecutive term, and BJP state general secretary Shivesh Kumar, a former MLA who hopes to make a debut in the Rajya Sabha.

From the opposition camp, nomination papers were filed by RJD’s Amarendra Dhari Singh, a sitting member in the Rajya Sabha, who was accompanied by the party’s national working president Tejashwi Prasad Yadav to the Vidhan Sabha secretariat.The numbers in the Bihar assembly will determine the outcome. According to the formula for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the state, a candidate would require votes of at least 41 MLAs to get through.

The assembly polls held in Nov last year saw the NDA grabbing 202 seats. The RJD and its allies Congress and Left were bundled out for a combined tally of 35. With a combined strength of 202 in the 243-member Bihar assembly, the NDA is hopeful of grabbing all five seats going to the polls by “managing” support of three more MLAs from smaller parties.However, the opposition is exploring a path to secure one seat. If the RJD-led Grand Alliance, which has only 35 MLAs in the current assembly, gets the support of five MLAs of the AIMIM and one of Bahujan Samaj Party; the opposition’s candidate Singh can manage to win one seat.

In such a situation, the NDA would be able to win only four of the total five seats, turning the election into a test of cross-party support and last-minute alignments.Five vacancies from Bihar will be created in the Rajya Sabha on April 9 following the scheduled retirement of former Union minister Prem Chand Gupta and Amarendra Dhari Singh (both from RJD), Union minister Ram Nath Thakur and Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson Harivansh Narayan Singh (both from JD-U) and Upendra Kushwaha, also a former Union Minister, (RLM).The RJD held two of the five Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar, for which polls are being held. But in view of its decimation in the 2025 assembly polls, in which it managed only 25 seats, it has chosen to contest only one, dropping Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister.Scrutiny of the nomination papers will take place on Friday, and the candidature can be withdrawn till March 9, the official said.