Bihar's ruling Janata Dal (United) on Wednesday said it would field Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh and MP Ram Nath Thakur, whose terms end next month, for the upcoming election to the Upper House.
The party's state unit chief, Vashishtha Narayan Singh, made the announcement at a press conference here in the presence of its national general secretary RCP Singh, who is the JD(U)'s leader in the Rajya Sabha.
Elections to five Rajya Sabha seats from the state, which will fall vacant next month, will be held on March 26. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) holds three of these and its alliance partner BJP, the remaining two.
Harivansh is a veteran journalist and was the editor of Prabhat Khabar for many years.
Thakur, besides being from an extremely backward caste, is the son of late Karpoori Thakur, a former Bihar chief minister and arguably the tallest OBC leader in the state whom Nitish Kumar and socialists of his generation consider their political mentor.
The JD(U)-BJP coalition's strength in the assembly this time, however, is poised to win only three out of these five seats because the Congress-RJD combine, which had fought the 2015 state assembly polls in alliance with the JD(U), had seen dramatic rise in their tally and are slated to bag two Rajya Sabha seats.
It was a tough call for the JD(U) to drop Kahkashan Perveen, who had made her Rajya Sabha debut in 2014 at an early age of 35 years.
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The announcement was made shortly after the JD(U) leaders took part in a meeting of the core committee at the chief minister's residence that lasted for over an hour.
The party leaders refused to comment on what else transpired in the meeting, saying it was an "organisational matter".
They also ducked queries on developments in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP appears set to topple the Congress government following the resignations of over 20 MLAs loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia, who has crossed over to the saffron party.
Singh also sought to make light of the flutter caused by advertisements carried by various city dailies on Sunday in which a young woman has announced her intention to float a new political party, named 'Plurals', with herself as the chief ministerial candidate.
The woman, Pushpam Priya Chaudhary, claims to be an alumnus of London School of Economics. Her father Vinod Chaudhary is a former JD(U) MLC.
The last date for filing of nominations for Rajya Sabha polls is March 13. The BJP and the RJD-Congress combine are yet to come out with the names of their respective candidates.
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