Bihar Assembly Elections 2025 | Mukesh Sahani opts out of contest, but eyes Deputy Chief Minister's post

Vikassheel Insaan Party chief, who entered Bihar politics from Bollywood, kept Mahagathbandhan leaders on tenterhooks for the past fortnight

Patna: He has neither won an Assembly election nor a Lok Sabha election in his lifetime. Nor does he have any MLA or MP in his fold. Yet the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) chief Mukesh Sahani kept everyone, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Mahagathbandhan’s undeclared chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav, on tenterhooks for the past fortnight.

Being one of the constituents of the Mahagathbandhan, or the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, the VIP chief pulled out all the stops to extract his pound of flesh by demanding 30 seats to contest the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections and the post of Deputy Chief Minister if the alliance is voted to power.

Neither of his two demands, however, was met by the alliance leaders.

On Friday, Sahani announced he would not contest the Assembly election but work for the Mahagathbandhan after pledging his loyalty to the RJD-led alliance.

A repeat of 2020?

Sahani had done a similar dramatic act in the last minute in the run-up to the 2020 Assembly elections, wherein he walked out of the Mahagathbandhan, accusing RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav of deceit, and eventually joined the NDA.

The BJP allotted him four seats. VIP candidates won three seats, but Sahani himself lost the Simri Bakhtiyarpur Assembly seat in November 2020. This was Sahani’s second consecutive defeat, as he had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Khagaria but had to bite the dust.

The man, who is a self-styled ‘son of Mallah’ and claims to have a considerable influence over the Nishad community (mostly fishermen and boatmen), could not have opted for a better constituency than Khagaria, which is surrounded by three rivers and where Sahani’s fellow castemen (the Mallahs) wield significant influence.

“Sahani is an overhyped leader, or a political broker, who claims to have hold over nine per cent Nishads (as per the latest caste survey in Bihar, where Nishads are classified as an extremely backward class, comprising fishermen and boatmen). However, it is beyond anyone’s comprehension that a man, who started his career as a Bollywood set designer, is bargaining tough with leaders of Tejashwi and Rahul Gandhi’s stature, that too without having a single MLA or MP in his fold,” averred social scientist professor Sudhanshu Kumar.

The political commentator expressed his dismay over the way the media has projected a larger-than-life image of a man who is no less than a power broker in the corridors of power and was thrown out of Nitish Kumar’s Cabinet in 2022 for his misdemeanour.

It was the BJP which insisted that Nitish Kumar appoint Sahani as a Minister (when he joined the BJP-led alliance during the November 2020 Assembly polls). Though Sahani lost the Assembly election and was not a member of either of the Houses, he was made an MLC with the support of the BJP and eventually appointed Minister for Animal Husbandry and Fisheries. But his misdemeanour (his brother was reportedly found to be officiating a meet in his place) and his utterances against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath cost Sahani his ministerial berth.

Thrown out of the Cabinet, the 44-year-old Darbhanga-born Sahani switched over to the Mahagathbandhan again, where the mercurial leader kept everyone guessing till the deadline for filing nomination papers for the first phase of elections ended on Friday.

And when it did, the Bollywood worker-turned-politician was back to his theatrics and declared, “I am not contesting the Assembly polls. I will not become a Rajya Sabha member either. But will definitely become the Deputy Chief Minister if the Mahagathbandhan is voted to power.”