Bihar Congress President Rajesh Ram stages a protest at the entrance of the Sadaqat Ashram in Patna on March 16, a day after the NDA won all five Rajya Sabha seats that went to polls. | Photo credit: ANI
All four MLAs from the opposition Mahagathbandhan alliance in Bihar, who were not present during the voting in the Rajya Sabha elections on Tuesday (March 17, 2026), gave various reasons for skipping the polls. The NDA won all the five seats that went to polls on Monday (March 16, 2026).
While Congress MLAs Manohar Prasad Singh (Manihari), Surendra Prasad (Valimikinagar) and Manoj Bishwas (Forbesganj) claimed they were not happy with the joint candidate, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Dhaka MLA Faisal Rahman cited his mother’s unwellness as the reason for his non-appearance. The alliance’s candidate, RJD’s Amarendra Dhari Singh, lost the election.
Mr. Bish was accused of having been instructed by State Congress chief Rajesh Ram to skip the polls as he was unhappy that he was not involved in the selection of a common candidate.
“On March 12, all three of us had a meeting with Rajeshji and he told us that we are free to decide. If our leader does not get due respect, then it is not good to give votes in favor of RJD candidate. Just because our leader is a Dalit, he did not get due respect and was not involved in the entire election process,” Mr. Patna Rajya Sabha told the media in Patna Rajya Sabha.
He also denied any pressure from the NDA camp to abstain, saying he was “just following the ideology of the party”.
However, the State Congress president termed the allegation as “baseless”. “Why did they switch off their mobile phones? The allegations made by the MLAs are baseless. Being a national party, we are waiting for instructions from the central leadership to take disciplinary action against them Wait for the right time,” Mr Ram told reporters.
In a Facebook post, Mr. Surendra Prasad said, “Since the Grand Alliance had an opportunity to contest only one seat, we could have chosen a better candidate, Deepak Yadav or Mukesh Sahani. Instead of giving them an opportunity, the candidature was given to an individual belonging to a social group whose support base is actually against the Grand Alliance.”
Mr. Singh hails from the upper-caste Bhumihar community, which is considered the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) core voter base.
“As I could not support the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the RJD had chosen the wrong candidate, I decided to simply abstain,” he said.
Mr. Surendra Prasad denied the allegations of involvement in horse-trading. “During a meeting with (RJD leader) Tejashwi Yadavji on March 5, his name and Hena Sahab (wife of the late politician-turned-don, Mohammad Shahabuddin) were discussed and we had no problem with those names. After some time, the three of us heard the name Amarendra Dhari Singh,” I said. Then I decided not to even vote for him the first time.
Mr. Manohar Prasad said that Mr. Singh was not a Congress candidate, so he skipped the vote. “The Mahagathbandhan candidate was not announced, it was the RJD candidate. No one told us that he was the Mahagathbandhan candidate. The candidate was not in line with our ideology,” he said.
Of the five NDA candidates who secured victory, there were two each from the Bharatiya Janata Party – party national president Nitin Nabin and Shivesh Kumar – and the Janata Dal (United) – chief minister Nitish Kumar and Ramnath Thakur. Rashtriya Lok Morcha president and former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, who is part of the ruling alliance, also secured victory.
There was a contest between Mr. Shivesh Kumar and Mr. Singh for the fifth position. While Mr. Shivesh Kumar got 38 votes, Mr. Singh got 37 votes.
Published – 17 March 2026 22:40 IST
