Patna: Five years apart, Mukesh Sahani was once again at a press conference organised by the grand alliance ahead of Bihar assembly polls, but there was a stark difference between the two.
Before the 2020 election, Sahani, a Bollywood set designer-turned-politician, had walked out of the PC in desperation, alleging that Tejashwi Yadav and his party, RJD, backstabbed him by sidelining him in the seat-distribution deal. But in the PC held on Thursday, he emerged as a victor, as he was declared deputy chief minister face of the INDIA bloc for the coming Lok Sabha election.
After quitting the grand alliance in 2020, he contested the election held same year as an ally of NDA, as BJP gave his party 11 seats to contest from its NDA quota. The VIP emerged victorious on four seats but Sahani lost his own election. Sahani was made a minister following the formation of the NDA government, as he was also sent to the Bihar legislative council so that he could continue in his post. Relations between Sahani and BJP soured in the run-up to 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly election. Sahani was hopeful that BJP would give him a few seats, especially in eastern UP, which has a large Nishad population. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, however, preferred an alliance with Sanjay Nishad’s Nishad Party, over Sahani.
Sahani then fielded 56 of his candidates in the UP polls, declaring that he would remove Adityanath in 2022 and PM Narendra Modi in 2024. All but one of his candidates managed to save their deposits as Sahani`s party could not open an account.
As BJP was upset over Sahani’s audacity, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, recommended his dismissal from the state cabinet in 2022 as he remained defiant. He refused to quit the cabinet and claimed that his party’s contribution in helping the BJP win 74 seats in the 2020 state election couldn’t be undermined. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, VIP as an ally of INDIA bloc, contested three seats but could not win any one of them.
Though he has not won a single election in his life, Sahani`s importance is always counted. He was first seen campaigning for the BJP in the 2015 assembly polls before switching to the RJD-led grand alliance ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. His party lost all three Lok Sabha seats it contested.
With Sahani staying in the INDIA bloc, the opposition alliance can hope of making inroads into the EBC vote bank. EBCs constitute 30 percent of the state’s voters. The Nishads or the boatmen community form around 9.6 percent of the EBCs, as per the 2023 state caste survey, with the Mallah sub-caste among the Nishads to which Sahani belongs comprising 2.6 percent of the population.
Apart from Mallahs, the Nishad community includes the Bind, Manjhi, Kewat and Turha groups. Seen as “floating voters”, these marginalised groups live in the riverine belts of North Bihar and, in a closely contested election, could play a decisive role in regions such as Muzaffarpur, East Champaran, Madhubani, Khagaria, Vaishali, and certain other districts.
