Bihar Assembly Elections 2025 | Two JNU alumni, 30 years apart, take their battle to the ballot

In Dhananjay’s first electoral, he will be fighting for a seat, which the party lost in a close battle last time when JD(U)’s Sunil Kumar defeated Jitendra Paswan.

New Delhi: Bihar and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) are of the same vein when it comes to their love for politics and electoral battles.

In the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections, not one but two alumni who headed the varsity’s students union 30 years apart are contesting the polls, while another one who is not in the electoral battle will campaign for the duo.

Shakeel Ahmad Khan (60), a two-term MLA who was president of the JNUSU in 1992-93, will contest from the Kadwa seat on a Congress ticket for a third time, having won it twice previously.

A much younger Dhananjay (29), who is pursuing a PhD in theatre studies and was JNUSU president in 2023-24, will debut in electoral politics from Bhorey on a CPI(ML)L ticket, where the party had lost by just 462 votes last time.

Kanhaiya Kumar of the Congress, who was JNUSU president in 2015-16 and had fought the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls, will campaign for Khan and Dhananjay as well as other I.N.D.I.A bloc candidates.

Khan, who entered student politics through SFI and became the JNUSU president before crossing over to Congress, won from Kadwa in 2015 and 2020 and had been Congress’ Legislature Party Leader in the Assembly.

This will be Dhananjay’s first electoral battle beyond student politics. He will be fighting for a seat, which the party lost in a close battle last time when JD(U)’s Sunil Kumar defeated Jitendra Paswan.

Dhananjay will be the fourth JNUSU president to fight an election after Khan, Kumar and Aishe Ghosh, who had fought the 2021 Assembly elections on a CPM ticket.

CPI(ML)L was initially considering fielding Dhananjay from Gaya, but as negotiations with the RJD did not lead to a positive conclusion, they chose Bhorey.

Paswan is facing cases, which the party said were 'forged', and this led the CPI(ML)L to field Dhananjay from Bhorey.

Sources said CPI(ML)L is part of the struggle of the lower castes and marginalised people in the area for a long time and it has groomed leadership since the 1980s.

“It is in this tradition that Dhananjay has been fielded. We had been fighting Bhorey with vigour and after a lull, it was Jitendra Paswan who fought electoral battles in 2015 and 2020 when we came close to a victory. It was only because of Paswan’s growing acceptability that a fake case was filed against him,” a senior leader said.