Patna: The NDA in Bihar, comprising the BJP, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janashakti Party (LJP), announced Saturday its candidates for 39 out of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
As expected, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha who won in 2014 from the Patna Sahib constituency was given the snub after his anti-party comments against both the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the last few months. The BJP has nominated Ravi Shankar Prasad in place of Sinha.
The names were announced at a press meet here by BJP national general secretary and party in-charge for Bihar.
According to media reports, Sinha is likely to join the Congress and seek re-election on a ticket of the grand old party.
Even though ‘Shotgun’ Sinha had been attacking Modi on a regular basis the party had refrained from taking any disciplinary measures. However, the actor whose tendency to shoot his mouth has often landed in trouble, took the matter too far when he attended Mamata Banerjee’s mega opposition rally in January at Kolkata. There he had said that during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s time, the focus was ‘lokshahi’ or democracy but now in PM Modi’s time it is ‘tanashahi’ or dictatorship.
While Union minister Giriraj Singh, whose Nawada seat has gone to the LJP, has been shifted to Begusarai, his colleagues in the council of ministers Radha Mohan Singh, RK Singh, Ashwani Kumar Choubey and Ram Kripal Yadav will be fielded from their respective sitting seats of Motihari, Ara, Buxar and Pataliputra.
LJP state president Pashupati Kumar Paras will be replacing his elder brother Paswan in Hajipur. The Union Minister is likely to get a Rajya Sabha ticket. Paswan’s son Chirag will be seeking re-election from Jamui.
Yadav also said the candidate for Khagaria Lok Sabha seat, which would be contested by the LJP, would be announced shortly.
PTI
