After being denied a ticket by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Muzaffarpur constituency, party leader Ajay Nishad is set to join the Congress Party on Tuesday ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Ajay Nishad, a two-time MP from Muzaffarpur, expressed disappointment over the BJP’s decision and cited this as the reason for his move to the Congress Party.
According to sources close to Ajay Nishad, the BJP’s decision to field Raj Bhushan Chaudhary for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections without consulting him was a key factor in his decision to switch parties. Raj Bhushan Nishad had been defeated by Ajay Nishad in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by a significant margin of over 4 lakh 10 thousand votes.
In Bihar, the BJP has announced its candidates for various constituencies, including Union ministers RK Singh from Arrah, Nityanand Rai from Ujiarpur, and Giriraj Singh from Begusarai. Former Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Radha Mohan Singh, and Ram Kripal Yadav are also among the candidates.
The BJP has fielded K Surendran against Congress MP Rahul Gandhi from Kerala’s Wayanad. TN Sarasu, KS Radhakrishnan, and G Krishnakumar are the party’s candidates from other constituencies in Kerala.
Bihar will see polling for 40 Lok Sabha seats across all seven phases. In Phase 1, voting will be held on four seats. The state will witness polling on 5 seats each from Phase 2 to Phase 5. In Phases 6 and 7, elections will be held on 8 seats each.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the NDA, comprising BJP, JDU, and LJP, won 39 out of 40 seats in Bihar, while the Mahagathbandhan, led by RJD, INC, and RLSP, managed to secure only one seat.