Lok Sabha Elections 2024: CPI Announces Candidate For Begusarai Seat In Which Congress Was Staking Claim

Patna: In another sign of unease in the grand alliance over distribution of seats, the CPI on Friday announced its candidate for the Begusarai seat in which Congress was staking claim. The Congress wanted to field its firebrand leader Kanhaiya Kumar from the Begusarai constituency but now the CPI has fielded its candidate from there, lamented a senior Congress leader.

CPI general secretary D Raja said his party would field three-time MLA Awadhesh Rai as the party candidate. A decision to this effect was taken in the party's state executive meeting, attended by Raja and party national secretaries Nagendra Nath Ojha and Ram Krushna Panda. Earlier, the CPI claimed it was preparing for contesting the LS election in three constituencies Begusarai, Banka and Madhubani.

RJD strategy

In the Banka seat, the RJD has already nominated Jai Prakash Yadav. Meanwhile, tension between the RJD and the Congress over the Aurangabad seat seemed to have intensified after RJD chief Lalu Prasad announced its candidate from there. The Aurangabad seat is the traditional seat of the Congress as it was represented in the Lok Sabha by veteran party leader and former chief minister Satyendra Narayan Sinha, his son and former Delhi Police commissioner Nikhil Kumar and daughter-in-law Shyama Singh in the past.

Peeved over Lalu unilaterally’ declaring his party's candidate from Aurangabad, Nikhil accused RJD of violating ‘gathbandhan dharma’ by allocating tickets for constituencies where Congress had rightful claims. Nikhil won in Aurangabad as a Congress nominee in 2004 but Sushil Kumar Singh won in three subsequent polls, first as a JD(U) candidate in 2009 and subsequently as BJP candidate in the 2014 and 2019 LS elections.