Last-minute truce keeps Mukesh Sahani in Bihar Grand Alliance

With hours left to the deadline for filing nominations for the first phase of the Bihar polls and nowhere else to go, Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) has finally agreed to stay in the Opposition’s Grand Alliance, accepting the 15-seat offer made to it.

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Hectic efforts were made by alliance leaders Dipankar Bhattacharya of the CPI-MLL and Congress’ Rahul Gandhi through Thursday (October 16) to keep Sahani in the alliance even as a livid RJD refused to engage any further with the VIP chief.

Last-minute deal saves alliance

On Thursday, Sahani had reportedly planned to address a press conference in Patna to announce his decision to quit the alliance and uphold the “dignity and respect” of the extremely backward Mallah (boatmen and fishermen) community to which he belongs. Invites had been sent out for the press conference, which was twice rescheduled without officially citing any reason before being cancelled, even as his party members present at the venue slammed the RJD and claimed threatened that Tejashwi would “pay a heavy price” in the elections for the affront to Sahani, who calls himself ‘son of Mallah’.

Sources say it was the intervention of Bhattacharya and Rahul that finally stopped the Mallah leader from jumping off the Grand Alliance boat, howsoever grudgingly. His decision to stay, say sources familiar with the last-minute negotiations, was bolstered by the assurance from allies that his party will be offered a Rajya Sabha berth as well as two seats in the Bihar legislative council.

However, there was still no clarity on whether the RJD had agreed to cede the Simri Bakhtiarpur seat in Saharsa district to Sahani. In the 2020 polls, which the VIP had contested as part of the NDA alliance, Sahani had lost the Simri Bakhtiarpur seat to the RJD’s Yusuf Salahuddin by a narrow margin of 1759. Sources told The Federal that while Sahani was keen on trying his luck from Simri Bakhtiarpur this election too, the RJD was unwilling to yield its ‘sitting constituency’ to the VIP, especially since the seat has a dominance of Yadavs and Muslims; the communities that form the RJD’s core vote base. The RJD has already declared Salahuddin as its candidate from the constituency.

Seat swap to placate Sahani

The RJD, it is learnt, has offered the Gaura Bauram constituency in Darbhanga to Sahani. RJD insiders say Sahani has a better chance of winning from Gaura Bauram, a seat with substantial Mallah votes that the VIP’s Swarna Singh had won against the RJD’s Afzal Ali Khan in 2020. Besides, Darbhanga is also the home district of Sahani and RJD leaders argue that he would not be bogged down by the ‘outsider’ tag in Gaura Bauram, unlike the 2020 polls when he faced this charge while seeking election from Simri Bakhtiarpur. Though the RJD had declared its candidate from Gaura Bauram, the party has decided to withdraw from the contest here in the hope that Sahani would agree to contest from the seat and withdraw his claim from Simri Bakhtiarpur.

Disagreement between Sahani and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav also continues over the Tarapur seat in Munger district, the high-profile seat this election season from where the BJP has fielded its deputy chief minister Samrat Choudhary. While the seat has been held by the JD-U since 2010 and has never elected a BJP MLA, it was considered a RJD stronghold between 2000 and 2010 when Choudhary’s father, Shakuni Choudhary, was the RJD MLA from here. Shakuni Choudhary had also won the seat for the Congress in the 1990 elections that had first seen RJD chief Lalu Yadav’s ascent as Bihar’s CM.

RJD holds ground firmly

This time around, Sahani had been demanding the Tarapur seat for the VIP’s Sakaldev Bind, but the RJD has already declared Arun Sah as its nominee from here. Sah, who has already filed his nomination from Tarapur, had lost the seat in the 2020 polls to the JD-U’s Rajeev Singh by a narrow margin of 3800 votes. Sources in the RJD told The Federal that “there was no question of withdrawing Sah from the Tarapur contest and that if Sahani wanted to go ahead and field Bind from the seat, he is free to do so”.

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Unlike the RJD, which has refused to make further concessions to the VIP beyond the 15 seats currently offered to the party, the CPI-MLL has agreed to withdraw its claim on the Aurai seat in Muzaffarpur district. The VIP is likely to field Bhogendra Sahani from Aurai.

Meanwhile, the RJD has managed to buttress the alliance by including a new ally, the Indian Inclusive Party of IP Gupta. Gupta, who has, for the past year leading a spirited campaign for the inclusion of the extremely backward Tanti and Tatwa communities in Bihar’s Scheduled Castes list, has been offered three seats by the RJD. Gupta is expected to file his nomination papers from the Saharsa seat later today (October 17).