Patna: The BJP appointed a relatively low-profile leader, Hari Sahni, as the leader of the opposition in the Bihar legislative council Sunday, in a bid to woo the influential Nishad community.
Sahni was preceded in the role by Samrat Choudhary, another low-profile leader who belongs to the Kushwaha caste, which is the second-largest OBC group after the Yadavs.
Choudhary was elevated to the post of state president of the BJP earlier this year. He has been vocal in criticising Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and is seen as a potential chief ministerial candidate of the BJP in case it wins the 2025 assembly polls.
The appointments have led to speculation that the BJP is looking to send a message to smaller parties — allies and potential allies — that it can build its own base among the backward castes in Bihar.
In particular, these decisions are being seen in political circles as a message to Mukesh Sahani of the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) and Upendra Kushwaha of the Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD).
It is learnt from BJP sources that talks for an alliance with the VIP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections have failed over the latter’s seat demands.
Mukesh Sahani had allied with the BJP in the 2020 assembly polls, and became a minister in the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government. However, he later parted ways with the BJP and contested more than 50 seats in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in 2022, where he allegedly made derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The RLJD, meanwhile, has announced a tie-up with the BJP.
The BJP and Kushwaha have denied the speculation surrounding Sahni and Choudhary, and their appointments. “Our party is giving representation to sections who have been either ignored or given inadequate representation. We do not have a shortage of party workers at the grassroots in any section,” BJP Bihar spokesperson Prem Ranjan Patel told ThePrint.
Kushwaha said there is “a difference between the NDA and the parties in it”.
“The parties do things that they perceive will strengthen their own party. I also take steps that I think will strengthen my party Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD). If the BJP has elevated Samrat Choudhary and Hari Sahni, it does not mean contradictions in the NDA,” Kushwaha added.
He stressed that he was a part of the NDA and had participated in the coalition meeting in Delhi on 18 July that was attended by 39 alliance parties.
Meanwhile, Sahani of the VIP — who claims to be the leader of the community — said the BJP was feeling threatened by his ‘Nishad Arakshan Yatra‘ — a campaign for reservation for the community
Hari Sahni, a former government employee who was nominated to Bihar’s upper house by the BJP in 2022, hails from Darbhanga district and, like Sahani, belongs to the Mallah caste — a sub-group of the Nishads.
The Mallah community has a sizable presence in several Lok Sabha seats in north Bihar, including Vaishali, Muzaffarpur, Khagaria, Madhubani and Darbhanga.
“I congratulate Hari Sahni for his elevation. But he should remember that he got the post because of the awareness I created in the Nishad Samaj,” Mukesh Sahani told ThePrint Monday, denying having any talks with the BJP on seat-sharing.
The flip-flops
The BJP’s move to promote its own leaders from different castes is seen as an attempt to reduce its dependence on smaller allies like VIP and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), led by Jitan Ram Manjhi, who are seen as unreliable.
Both Mukesh Sahani and Upendra Kushwaha have track records of abandoning the NDA. Kushwaha was an ally of the BJP from 2014 but deserted it before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to join the Grand Alliance. After the 2020 assembly polls, he joined the Janata Dal-United (JDU) but again left to form his own party, RLJD, earlier this year.
HAM’s leader Jitan Ram Manjhi, a former chief minister and a Dalit leader, has also changed his loyalties several times in the past. He was an ally of the BJP in the 2015 assembly polls then joined hands with the RJD in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Ahead of the 2020 assembly polls, he came back to the JD(U) and is currently with the BJP again.
“Smaller parties are essential for bringing in support from certain sections of the society, but highly unreliable and demanding as allies,” a BJP MP told ThePrint requesting anonymity. He added that it was natural for the BJP to want its own leaders and base representing these sections.
However, there is caution in the BJP as an earlier experiment on the same lines was not seen to have yielded the desired results.
After the 2020 assembly polls, the BJP made Tarkishore Prasad, an OBC (Other Backward Classes), and Renu Devi, a member of EBC (Extremely Backward Classes), deputy CMs in the Nitish Kumar-led government. The BJP sources said that they failed to galvanise the non-Yadav backward classes towards the BJP.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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