Following the 13th round of voting in the high-stakes Chapra constituency battle, the Bhartiya Janta Party ( BJP) Chhoti Kumari has narrowed the margin to 44,773 votes, whereas the RJD superstar candidate Khesari Lal Yadav is very close to her, he is at 37,034 votes.
Shatrughan Yadav, the Bhojpuri singer and actor, who is also known as Khesari Lal Yadav, is carrying the Chapra seat on an RJD ticket in the 2025 Bihar elections.
At 2 PM EC trends indicate that he is trailing EC trends with BJP trailing him by over 2,000 votes. Khesari Lal Yadav has also gained a lot of fame through his songs that have received criticism of treating women as objects.
The Saran district of Chapra assembly constituency continues to be a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold since 2010. BJP has also nominated Choti Kumari and has not given a ticket to CN Gupta, a RSS sanghchalak (chief) of Saran who has been the reining incumbent in Chapra assembly constituency since 2015.
Who is Chhoti Kumari?
Chhoti Kumari, the BJP candidate of Chapra, is a local political figure and an incumbent Zila Parishad Chairperson of the Chhapra Assembly constituency in Saran. She is an active politician and has been in the fray of politics with the BJP offering her the seat against the sitting MLA, C.N. Gupta.
Chhoti Kumari has served as President of the District Council, even though it is a 12th pass. She is married to Dharmendra Sah who is the District General Secretary of the BJP. She belongs to the Vaishya man group that is a huge part of the local voters.
In her financial statement, she has a total assets of up to 1.4 crore.
The film Chapra carries a lot of political weight owing to its strategic location in the larger state electoral environment. Being one of the six segments of assembly of Saran Lok Sabha constituency which has historically been a battleground among the leading parties such as the BJP and the RJD, it is one of the most important towards shaping the parliamentary results and the NDA-Mahagathbandhan opposition.
BJP Dumps CN Gupta, Backs Chhoti Kumari
Being one of the six assembly units in the Saran Lok Sabha constituency, Saran is a historical battleground to RJD and BJP given the fact that it is a key contender to the outcome of parliamentary results and a trial of the popular NDA-Mahagathbandhan rivalry.
Chapra has traditionally been a caste dominated field in the state and since 1967, elections have been characterized more by a shift between Rajput and Yadav candidates of different parties, on the basis of the rich community loyalties in Bihar politics.
After delimitation, Vaishya (10-12% of the electorate, about 65,000 of a total of 2.89 lakh) community has become a deciding swing vote, along with Yadavs and Rajputs, thus making the seat a vortex of the social engineering process in Bihar.
