Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) rejoined the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in which the party will contest on three seats from the RJD’s quota. The development is significant as, turning the clock back to 2020, Sahani had walked out of a joint press conference with Tejashwi Yadav alleging “backstabbing”, miffed about the seat sharing for the Bihar Assembly elections that year. In 2024, the VIP chief returned to the Opposition camp as the duo held a press conference together again to announce the seat sharing pact.
What had happened in 2020?
VIP had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Opposition. The party had fought on three seats and had faced debacle on every single one of them. Sahani too had lost the election from Khagaria.
However, in 2020, the year when the state went to Assembly polls, VIP walked out of the Mahagathbandhan and joined the NDA. The situation had taken a dramatic turn after Tejashwi Yadav announced the seat-sharing deal with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) set to contest on 144 seats.
Yadav said the Congress would contest on 70 seats while the CPM, CPI and CPI (ML) will contest on 4, 6 and 19 seats respectively. He further said that the party will accommodate seats for the VIP and JMM parties from the RJD's quota since discussions were on with the two parties, in the next few days. Sahani was upset that the RJD didn't announce the number of seats promised to the Vikassheel Insaan Party. Sahani declared that he had been back-stabbed.
“We were expecting 25 seats but when the time came, the RJD back-stabbed me and my party. They have ignored us at the critical juncture of this election as we belong to the most backward section of society,” Sahani had said then.
Sahani-Tejashwi on stage once again
Mukesh Sahani walked on to the stage once again with Tejashwi Yadav, this time to announce the alliance, on Friday. Tejashwi said that VIP will contest on Gopalganj, Jhanjharpur, and Motihari seats which have been spared from RJD’s quota. Sahni represents the Nishad community which is 2.60 percent of the population in Bihar. Under the new seat-sharing arrangement, RJD would contest on 23 seats, Congress on 9, Left parties on 5 and VIP on 3.
Sahani in Nitish Kumar’s government
In the new Bihar government headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Sahani became a minister, understandably at the instance of the BJP, which also helped him become a member of the legislative council since he had failed to get elected to the assembly.
Sahani, who uses the sobriquet “son of mallah” to project himself as a leader of castes traditionally involved in fishing, was expelled from the cabinet after he rubbed the BJP the wrong way while campaigning for his party in Uttar Pradesh.
Subsequently, all four VIP MLAs also joined the BJP while Sahani was left high and dry after his legislative council term ended, shortly after his expulsion from the cabinet.
The country will go to Lok Sabha polls starting April 19. The seven-phased general elections will culminate with the declaration of results on June 4.
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