Jitan Ram Manjhi says his party HAM should be given one Rs seat in Bihar as promised by BJP

Gayaji (Bihar), Feb 28 (PTI) In a fresh outburst, Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Saturday said that his party Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) should be given a Rajya Sabha seat in Bihar for which elections would be held on March 16.

Manjhi claimed that the HAM, a constituent of the NDA, had been promised one Rajya Sabha seat by the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The Election Commission recently announced elections for five Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar, three of which are held by the ruling NDA.

The last date for filing nominations is March 5, while scrutiny of nomination papers will take place the next day. Candidates will be allowed to withdraw their nominations until March 9.

Of the total 16 Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar, five will be vacated in April, for which elections will be held. The five are Harivansh Narayan Singh and Ram Nath Thakur of the JD(U), Prem Chand Gupta and Amarendra Dhari Singh of the RJD, and Upendra Kushwaha of the RLM, a constituent of the NDA.

Kushwaha is a former Union minister who entered the Upper House in 2025 with the help of the BJP. The RJD, the principal opposition party in the state, has only 25 MLAs, too few to retain a Rajya Sabha berth.

"Ahead of the 2024 general elections, we were promised by top BJP leaders two seats in the Lok Sabha and one in the Rajya Sabha. But we got only one Lok Sabha seat, and we won it for the NDA,” Manjhi, who floated his own party in 2015, told reporters here on Saturday.

“The promise on the Rajya Sabha seat remains to be fulfilled. I am not going to ask for that, but our party should be given at least one Rajya Sabha seat," he said.

The NDA is yet to name candidates for the polls for the Upper House of Parliament.

Meanwhile, the opposition Mahagathbandhan is banking on the support of AIMIM and BSP, parties with which it has never aligned, to win one out of five Rajya Sabha seats, sources said.

The RJD-helmed grand alliance, which includes Congress, CPI(ML) and CPI(M), besides fledgling IIP, has only 35 members in the 243-strong state assembly, six less than the minimum number required to get a berth in the Council of States. PTI PKD NN