Even as seat-sharing negotiations for the 2025 Bihar assembly elections continue among both the NDA and Opposition alliances, the Masaurhi constituency in Patna district has become a sticky situation for the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
There has been a growing demand from the RJD cadre against giving sitting MLA Rekha Devi a ticket, amid reports that the RJD has almost finalised the list of candidates, with Tejashwi Yadav personally approving the majority of the candidates.
On Tuesday, RJD workers staged a protest outside the Patna residence of former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi, the mother of Yadav, opposing a ticket to Rekha Devi from Masaurhi.
The party workers are demanding that a new, more capable candidate be fielded from the constituency.
Who is Rekha Devi
Rekha Devi is the incumbent MLA from Masaurhi constituency, reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC). She won the 2020 assembly elections by a margin of 32,227 votes, defeating Nutan Paswan of Janata Dal (United). She polled 98,696 votes against Paswan, who secured 66,469 votes.
She has been serving as an MLA since 2015, winning the elections in both 2015 and 2020 from Masaurhi.
Why there is a protest against her?
Those opposing her candidacy claim that she failed to engage with the public during her tenure as MLA and prioritise development in the region, say media reports.
According to a Hindi news18 report, several RJD leaders want to conest from the seat and have rallied their supporters and staged the protest, demanding that Rekha Devi be replaced.
The protests against the MLA come even as Yadav is reportedly working on a strategy not to offer tickets to sitting MLAs who have performed poorly in the past five years.