The Congress is likely to contest 58 of the 243 seats in the Bihar assembly elections and has already finalised candidates for 25, The Indian Express has learnt. This would be 12 fewer seats than the party contested in the 2020 assembly elections. Those in the fray include 15 of the Congress’s 17 sitting MLAs. The candidature of two sitting MLAs is “on hold” as the party could either field new candidates or swap seats with its ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), it is learnt. Congress had won just 19 of the 70 seats it contested in the 2020 Assembly elections. Two of its MLAs – Murari Prasad Gautam (from Chenari) and Siddharth Saurav (from Vikram) – had eventually rebelled against the party and might contest the upcoming polls on a BJP ticket, it is learnt. According to highly placed sources, the 25 candidates the party appears to have finalised include Akash Kumar, the son of former Bihar Congress chief and Rajya Sabha MP Alhikesh Prasad Singh, and Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Rajesh Kumar (Kutumba). The party is also expected to field Vishwanath Ram (Rajpur), Munna Tiwari (Buxar), Ajit Sharma (Bhagalpur), Vijendra Choudhary (Muzaffarpur), Ajay Singh (Jamalpur), Chhatrapati Yadav (Khagaria), Anand Shanker Singh (Aurangabad), Manohar Prasad (Manihari), Santosh Mishra (Karahgar), Abidur Rahman (Araria), Shakeel Ahmad Khan (Kadwa), Mohammed Aafaque Alam (Kasba), Izharul Hussain (Kishanganj) and Neetu Kumari (Hisua). Other candidates who lost last time but are likely to be included are Akash Kumar (Kurtha), Gajanan Shahi (Barbigha), Mantan Singh (Warsaliganj), Anil Singh (Harnaut), Poonam Paswan (Kodha), Amit Kumar Tunna (Riga) and Bunty Choudhary (Sikandara). In the 2020 assembly polls, the Mahagathbandhan alliance between the RJD, Congress and Left had given the NDA a tough fight, winning 110 seats and 37.23% of the votes (just 0.03% shy of the NDA’s tally). The RJD, in particular, recorded a strong performance, emerging as the largest party, with 75 seats from 144 contested and 23.11% vote share. While the Left parties won 16 seats with 4.64% of the votes, the Congress was the laggard, managing just 19 seats out of the 70 it contested and securing 9.48% of the votes.
