The Janata Dal (United) has announced candidates for all 16 Lok Sabha seats it is contesting in Bihar, with 12 of the sitting MPs given another chance from their respective seats.
The list of candidates includes six from Other Backward Classes, five from Extremely Backward Classes, one Mahadalit, a Muslim, and three from the upper castes. There are also two women.
Among the seats where the sitting MPs have been dropped are Sitamarhi, where legislative council chairman Devesh Chandra Thakur will be the JD(U) candidate, and Siwan, where Vijay Laxmi Kushwaha has been fielded.
Kushwaha got the ticket a day after she joined the party along with her husband, Ramesh Singh Kushwaha who was the state president of Rashtriya Lok Morcha.
Lovely Anand, wife of gangster turned politician Anand Mohan, who had quit the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and joined the JD (U) earlier this week, has been fielded from Sheohar.
Among other candidates, Sunil Kumar will fight from Balmiki Nagar, Devesh Chandra Thakur from Sitamarhi, Ramprit Mandal from Jhanjharpur, Dileshwar Kamait from Supaul, Mujahid Alam from Kishanganj, Dulalchandra Goswami from Katihar, Santosh Kumar from Purnea, Dinesh Chandra Yadav from Madhepura, and Alok Kumar Suman from Gopalganj.
As per the seat-sharing agreement with the BJP, the JD(U) will contest 16 of the 40 seats in the state—equivalent to its current strength in the Lok Sabha—while the saffron party will field candidates in 17 seats.
Bihar will witness a seven-phase poll from April 19. The first phase will see voting on four seats, followed by five seats each from Phase 2 to Phase 5. The last two phases, 6 and 7, will have elections on eight seats each.
