Patna, March 15 JD(U) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha asserted that all NDA candidates in Bihar for the Rajya Sabha elections, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will "win by a large margin".
Jha made this assertion on Saturday, ahead of the March 16 elections.
Six candidates – five from the ruling NDA and one from the opposition – are contesting for five Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar. Among those contesting are Kumar and BJP national president Nitin Nabin.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, Jha said, "We don't know what opposition leaders are claiming about the outcome of the Rajya Sabha elections in Bihar... Let me make it very clear that all NDA candidates in the Rajya Sabha elections will win by a large margin."
The NDA alliance partners in Bihar held separate meetings with their respective MLAs on Saturday to discuss the strategy ahead of the polls.
While the state BJP's core committee meeting was held at the party office in Patna, Union minister Chirag Paswan's LJP (RV) also called a separate meeting of its MLAs. Union minister Harsh Malhotra and Chhattisgarh Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma, who are central observers for the Rajya Sabha polls in Bihar, were present in both meetings.
Another such meeting took place at the residence of Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) chief Upendra Kushwaha in the state capital. Kushwaha, an NDA candidate, is seeking a second consecutive term in the Upper House of Parliament.
Speaking to reporters after the BJP's state core committee meeting, Bihar minister Dilip Jaiswal, said, "The meeting was called to train newly elected party MLAs about voting in the Rajya Sabha polls."
Another crucial meeting of all NDA MLAs will be held at the official residence of senior JD(U) leader and Bihar Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary in the state capital on Sunday.
Besides Nabin and Kumar, other NDA candidates in the fray are Union minister Ram Nath Thakur of the JD(U), who aims at a hat-trick, Kushwaha, and BJP state general secretary Shivesh Kumar, a former MLA, hoping to make his debut in Parliament.
RJD's Amarendra Dhari Singh, an MP and businessman-turned-politician, is also in the fray. The RJD held two of the five Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar for which polls are being held. But in view of its decimation in the 2025 assembly polls, where it managed only 25 seats, the RJD chose to contest only one seat.
The NDA enjoys a brute majority in the assembly, though its tally of 202 in the 243-member House falls three short of the number needed to secure all five Rajya Sabha seats.
To win a Rajya Sabha seat, one needs the support of at least 41 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar Assembly.