A day before the Bihar Election 2025 Phase 1 Voting, the vehicle of Jyoti Baleshwar Manjhi, MLA from Barachatti and a candidate of Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awam Morcha (HAM), came under attack by unidentified miscreants on Wednesday night, resulting in several serious in serious injuries.
A day before the Bihar Election 2025 Phase 1 Voting, the vehicle of Jyoti Baleshwar Manjhi, the MLA from Bihar’s Barachatti constituency and a candidate of Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awam Morcha (HAM), came under attack by unidentified miscreants on Wednesday night, resulting in several serious injuries. At the time of the incident, Manjhi was campaigning in Barachatti’s Sulebatta mod, when unknown miscreants hurled bricks and stones at her vehicle, which was open. During the attack, a stone hit her chest, while also injured in her head and hands. The attack resulted in massive chaos, which led to concerns among her supporters who took her to a safer place.
What happened to Jyoti Manjhi?
She was initially treated at a local hospital and later referred to Magadh Medical College. Police are investigating the attack. Meanwhile, DSP Ajay Prasad says, “Jyoti Manjhi, after campaigning, returned to her office, was reportedly attacked while standing near her vehicle in Barachatti. A stone was thrown at her by an unidentified individual, hitting her. The police responded quickly, with an FST vehicle and a patrolling car stationed nearby. However, no one witnessed the attacker or could identify who threw the stone. The woman with her at the time also couldn’t provide any details.”
Manjhi has been attacked twice earlier, according to reports. While campaigning in Kharanti village, under the Magadh University police station area, her vehicle was attacked by unidentified miscreants who tore posters from her vehicle. In another incident, she was attacked in the Dema village, where bike-borne youths entered her convoy shouting slogans during her outreach programme.
Jyoti Manjhi is a candidate from the Barachatti Assembly constituency, and as she married her daughter to his son, she shares a family connection with Jitan Ram Manjhi.
The stage is set for the crucial first phase of the assembly elections in Bihar on Thursday, as 3.75 crore voters will decide the electoral fate of 1,314 candidates, including top leaders such as the INDIA bloc’s chief ministerial face Tejashwi Yadav and Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary of the BJP.
Tejashwi Yadav- Yadav aims at a hat-trick in Raghopur, while his principal challenger Satish Kumar of the BJP had defeated his mother Rabri Devi in 2010 while contesting on a JD(U) symbol. The seat was expected to witness a high-voltage contest, with Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor declaring that he wanted to take on Yadav on his home turf. However, Kishor decided not to contest, and his party gave a ticket to a less fancied candidate, Chanchal Singh.
Tej Pratap- In adjoining Mahua, Yadav’s estranged elder brother Tej Pratap, who has floated his own outfit Janshakti Janata Dal, is locked in a multi-cornered contest. The elder son of RJD president Lalu Prasad seeks to wrest the seat from sitting RJD MLA Mukesh Raushan, though the presence of Sanjay Singh, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) candidate who represents the NDA, and Independent Ashma Parveen, the runner-up of 2020, has queered the pitch.
Several ministers in the Nitish Kumar government, including Deputy Chief Ministers Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, will also have their electoral fates decided in the first phase of polls. Sinha hopes to retain Lakhisarai for the fourth consecutive term, surmounting the not-so-formidable challenge provided by Amresh Kumar of the Congress and Suraj Kumar of the Jan Suraaj Party. Choudhary, who is enjoying his second consecutive term in the legislative council, is contesting a direct election after about a decade from Tarapur.
The former state BJP president faces a stiff challenge from RJD’s Arun Kumar Sah, who had lost the seat in 2020 by a thin margin of about 5,000 votes.
Other seats and candidates whose performance would be keenly watched are young folk singer Maithili Thakur (BJP-Aliganj) and Bhojpuri superstars Khesari Lal Yadav (RJD-Chhapra) and Ritesh Pandey (Jan Suraaj Party – Kargahar). About a dozen ministers, most of them from the BJP, which has the lion’s share in the cabinet by virtue of its superior strength in the assembly, are in the fray.
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