By Kavita Sharma.
Photo Credit: The Suncity News.
Patna, September 11, 2026: The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has stepped up preparations for the upcoming elections to eight seats in the Bihar Legislative Council, announcing candidates for six constituencies while discussions over the remaining two are still underway.
The MLC elections will cover four Teachers Constituencies and four Graduate Constituency seats.
The terms of the incumbent MLCs are scheduled to expire on November 16, 2026, with the election process expected to be announced in September.
Unlike Assembly elections, the Teachers and Graduate constituencies have a specialised electorate.
As a result, political parties as well as independent candidates are preparing for what is expected to be a closely contested election.
RJD state president announced the names:
According to the list issued by the office of RJD state president Mangnilal Mandal, the party has fielded Dr. Sanjiv Kumar Singh for the Patna Teacher Constituency and Dilip Kumar for the Patna Graduate Constituency.
RJD has also nominated Nitesh Kumar for the Kosi Graduate constituency, Anil Kumar Jha for Darbhanga Graduate Constituency, Prof. Jayram Yadav for the Saran Teachers Constituency and Dr Rashmi Vinayak Gautam for the Tirhut Graduate Constituency.
The RJD said discussions are continuing over the names of candidates for the two remaining seats, and their names will be announced soon.
Battle to retain and capture seats:
The four Teachers constituency seats are currently represented by Prof. Naval Kishor Yadav (BJP) from Patna, Dr Madan Mohan Jha Congress from Darbhanga, Afaque Ahmed (Independent) from Saran and Sanjiv Kumar Singh (CPI) from Tirhut.
Among the four Graduate Constituency seats, Neeraj Kumar (JDU) represents Patna, Sarvesh Kumar (Independent) represents Darbhanga, NK Yadav (BJP) represents Kosi, and Bansidhar Brajvasi (Independent) represents Tirhut.
The present composition gives three seats for independent candidates, while the BJP holds two. JDU, Congress, and CPI have a seat each.
The upcoming elections will therefore be important for the major political parties, which will have to defend their existing seats while also attempting to wrest constituencies currently represented by independent MLCs.
Among the Teachers’ Constituencies, Patna has the largest electorate, with 16689 voters.
It is followed by Saran with 10,800 voters, Tirhut with 9,204 and Darbhanga with 8,967.
The Graduate Constituencies have considerably larger electorates.
Tirhut has approximately 1.35 lakh voters, followed by Kosi with 1.34 lakh, Darbhanga with nearly 1.27 lakh, and Patna with about 88,000 voters.
With the terms of the sitting MLCs set to expire in November, political activity is expected to intensify in the coming weeks.
The formal announcement of the election schedule is likely to further accelerate campaigning and candidate mobilization across the eight constituencies.
EOM.
