Newsmaker | JD(U) MP facing flak for saying he won’t work for Yadavs, Muslims: Who is Devesh Chandra Thakur?

The 71-year-old’s remarks invited sharp criticism not only from rival Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) but also from ally BJP and his party’s Banka MP. While RJD leader Mrityunjay Tiwari called his remarks “casteist and feudalistic”, the BJP’s Other Backward Classes (OBC) Morcha national general secretary Nikhil Anand said that “no political party would be able to ignore Yadavs who comprise more than 14% of the state’s population”. JD(U)’s Banka MP Giridhari Yadav demanded an immediate apology from Thakur.

JD(U) chief spokesperson and MLC Neeraj Kumar told The Indian Express, “Though a leader is well within his rights to express his dismay at not getting support from some sections of society, a leader of Devesh Chandra Thakur’s stature should have refrained from making controversial remarks in public.”

Thakur who is a resident of Sitamarhi was the first candidate the JD(U) announced for the Lok Sabha polls. The early announcement created a flutter in Bihar political circles as the party denied the ticket to sitting MP Sunil Kumar Pintu, an OBC Vaishya. Thakur, the only upper-caste Brahmin to get a ticket from the JD(U), won by 51,356 votes from Sitamarhi, which has a sizeable Muslim and Yadav population. While Thakur got a 47.14% vote share, Arjun Rai of the RJD got 42.45% of the votes.

Since 2009, Sitamarhi has elected either the JD(U) or an NDA ally. In 2019, Pintu got 54.65% of the votes against Rai’s 30.53%. In 2014, the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party’s (RLSP) Ram Kumar Sharma won with 45.67% of the vote share against the RJD’s Sitaram Yadav, who got 29.24% of the votes.

Thakur’s comments came in the wake of a fiercely contested election, which was pitched as a battle between RJD’s Muslim-Yadav vote bank and the rest. Even after the barrage of criticism from all corners, Thakur remained unapologetic. “I have been in politics for 25 years now. I have worked for all. I said what I felt. I did not get support from these two communities. I have nothing against them but cannot do their personal work,” Thakur told reporters on Monday.

Thakur’s father Awadh Thakur was a renowned lawyer and trying to follow in his footsteps he too got his LLB degree from the Indian Law Society in Pune. After spending time in the Congress from 1990 to 1996, he quit politics to work for a shipping company. He returned to politics in 2002 when he became an Independent MLC.

In 2008, Thakur joined the JD(U) and was renominated as an MLC. He later became Bihar’s disaster management minister. Thakur who had been demanding Bihar Diwas be celebrated since 2000 finally impressed upon Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to approve it through the Cabinet in 2010. Thakur organised Bihar Diwas events in Mumbai in 2012 to popularise it among Biharis living outside the state.

Thakur was again nominated as an Independent MLC in 2014 and was named a JD(U) MLC for his fourth term in 2020. He became the Bihar Legislative Council chairperson in August 2022. Nitish is known to hold Thakur in high regard, once publicly describing him as someone who “knows as much about Ganga’s gahrai (depth) as about Nepal’s terai (foothills)”.