Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and BJP president Nitin Nabin filed their nomination papers for Rajya Sabha elections on Thursday, besides three other candidates of the NDA, which is hopeful of grabbing all five seats going to the polls despite the opposition RJD throwing its hat in the ring.
Kumar, who heads the JD(U), and Nabin, a regional leader who got catapulted to the top post in the BJP in January, filed their nomination papers in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had flown down from Delhi.
Besides Nabin and Kumar, other NDA candidates were Union Minister Ram Nath Thakur of the JD(U), who aims at a hat-trick, RLM president Upendra Kushwaha, who seeks a second consecutive term, and BJP state general secretary Shivesh Kumar, a former MLA who hopes to make a debut in Parliament.
Kumar announced his decision to enter the Rajya Sabha earlier in the day, bringing the curtains down on his 20-year tenure as the longest-serving CM of the state.
Asked about the development, Union Minister Giriraj Singh said, “Nitish Kumar had expressed his desire to move to the Rajya Sabha three years ago. Now that he has decided to go, he is doing so of his own will. Whatever government is formed in the future will be under his leadership.” Nomination papers were also filed by RJD’s Amarendra Dhari Singh, a sitting MP and businessman turned politician, who was accompanied, among others, by the party’s national working president, Tejashwi Yadav, to the Vidhan Sabha secretariat.
After filing his nomination papers, Union minister Thakur said, “The JD(U) has trusted me, sent me to Rajya Sabha thrice. I served as MLC for 12 years and as MLA for 10 years. I am indebted towards the party’s leadership. I wish to play a role in Nitish Kumar’s endeavours to make Bihar developed.” Kushwaha said it is a matter of great joy for him that Kumar will also be going to the Rajya Sabha, giving him the opportunity to work “alongside our elder brother”.
Asked who would be the next CM of Bihar, he said, “Nitish Kumar is still the chief minister of the state and hasn’t resigned yet. This question will arise only when he submits his resignation.” The RJD held two of the five Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar for which polls are being held. But in view of its decimation in the 2025 assembly polls, in which it managed only 25 seats, it has chosen to contest only one, dropping Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister and key aide of party supremo Lalu Prasad.
The NDA enjoys a brute majority in the assembly, though its tally of 202 in the 243-member House falls three short of the number needed to bag all five Rajya Sabha seats.
The RJD enjoys the backing of 10 other MLAs, all owing allegiance to the Mahagathbandhan, and hopes to make up for the deficit of six votes with the help of Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owais’s AIMIM and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s BSP, though neither party has, so far, declared its support to any of the Rajya Sabha candidates.
Scrutiny of the papers will take place on Friday, and the nominations can be withdrawn till March 9. If all six candidates are left in the fray, polling will be held on March 16.