Patna, Jul 1 (PTI) Janshakti Janata Dal president Tej Pratap Yadav on Wednesday declared Patna-based social activist Veena Manvi as his candidate for the bypoll to the Bankipur assembly seat in Bihar.
The seat fell vacant upon BJP national president Nitin Nabin’s election to the Rajya Sabha.
Yadav, a former state minister who was expelled from the RJD last year by his father Lalu Prasad, expressed confidence that his fledgling outfit will pose a tough challenge to the ruling NDA in what has, for decades, been a BJP stronghold.
“Veena Manvi has been working hard for the assembly segment’s people in her capacity as a social worker. In addition to representing women (‘aadhi aabadi’), she comes from a community which the BJP has always wooed,” said Yadav, referring to the Vaishya caste activist.
In the assembly polls last year, Nabin had bagged the seat for a fifth consecutive term, defeating his nearest RJD rival by an emphatic margin of nearly 50,000 seats.
Soon after he gave up the seat in April, Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor announced that he will pull out all the stops to wrest from the BJP a seat where the bypoll, according to the former poll strategist, would be a veritable referendum on the Samrat Choudhary government in the state.
Kishor, who is picking up the threads after his party failed to make a mark in the assembly elections, has also made it clear that he was not averse to contesting the seat himself, if an agreement was reached in the matter within the organisation.
Asked whether he saw Kishor as a threat to his party’s attempt at getting a toehold in the state’s politics, Yadav replied: “All are welcome to try their luck. We are not stopping anybody.” PTI NAC RBT
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