In a setback to Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s high-profile brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav, the Delimitation Commission has reserved his Gopalgunj Lok Sabha constituency for a Scheduled Caste candidate. This implies that Sadhu Yadav now cannot seek re-election from the constituency and finding an alternative “safe” seat will not be an easy task for him. The Railway Minister himself has got some solace as the Rajput-dominated Taraiya Assembly segment has been removed from the Chhapra parliamentary constituency he represents. The commission, headed by Kuldip Singh, has reportedly finalised the reorganisation of Lok Sabha and Assembly segments in Bihar. Though the total count of seats in the state remains unchanged—40 Lok Sabha and 243 Assembly seats—the commission has made some significant changes in their demographic profile and also given new names to some of them. The Lok Sabha constituency of Patna has been renamed as Patliputra with some additions and deletions of Assembly segments. Barh, the Lok Sabha seat identified with present Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, is no more and has been reorganised and named Patna Sahib to recognise the importance of the place in Sikhism as Guru Govind Singh was born here.Some new Lok Sabha segments have been reserved for SC candidates. Hajipur, the reserved parliamentary seat represented for a long time by Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan, has been left untouched as well as Sasaram represented at present by Union Minister Meira Kumar. The newly reserved segments are Gopalgunj, Samastipur and Jamui. Another significant development in the reserved category is that two Assembly segments Manihari and Katoria have been reserved for Schedule Tribe candidates. For the first time since tribal dominated Jharkhand was separated seats have been reserved for STs.
