At Begusarai, will the Bhumihars back Kanhaiya Kumar or Giriraj Singh

Patna, Apr 19: The fight at Begusarai will be a triangular one. Contesting on this seat at Giriraj Singh of the BJP, Kanhaiya Kumar of the CPI and Tanveer Hassan of the RJD.

Ideally this should have been a direct fight between the CPI and BJP. However the RJD which initially showed interest later backed out from including the CPI into its fold to fight the Bihar polls.

Kumar is contesting his first election and is expected to give Singh a tough fight. However it would be investing to see if the RJD candidate who is relying heavily on the Muslim-Yadav vote will end up playing spoilsport.

Hassan had contested this seat in 2014, but lost by a margin of 58,000 votes. In 2009, it was Monazir Hassan of the JD(U) who won this seat by a margin of 40,800 votes.The CPI would look to better its performance, but would also look at the fact that it has always finished either second or third here, with its vote share being intact. This constituency was a CPI stronghold in the early 1990s, but gradually lost ground to the regional parties in the state.

Elections in Begusarai are usually decided by the dominant upper caste community, Bhumihar. Both Singh and Kumar are from this community. Hence for the RJD, it would crucial for it to bag a large number of the Muslim-Yadav votes in order to take on the CPI or BJP.

The Bhumihars are 4.5 lakh in number, while Muslims account for 2.5 lakh of the population. The Yadavs on the other hand are 80,000 in number. The backward castes are 1 lakh in number.