On Monday, the NDA won all five Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar despite lacking a majority. Four MLAs from opposition parties—three from the Congress and one from the RJD—made a small contribution. These MLAs did not vote, citing various reasons. RJD’s Dhaka MLA Faisal Rahman said he could not vote due to his mother’s illness, while Congress MLAs Surendra Kushwaha (Valmiki Nagar), Manohar Prasad (Manihari), and Manoj Vishwas (Forbesganj) said the RJD did not value them and therefore did not cast their votes.
61-year-old Surendra Kushwaha defeated incumbent JDU MLA Dhirendra Pratap Singh by just over 1,600 votes in the 2025 elections. Surendra, who was previously associated with the Upendra Kushwaha-led Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM), joined the Congress party just before the assembly elections.
Kushwaha said, “We heard that Tejashwi would be the opposition candidate. Since he wasn’t in the fray, there was no point in voting for anyone else (A.D. Singh). Also, (Bihar Congress President) Rajesh Ram only sent me a text message asking me to vote for the RJD candidate. No call came. I thought it best to stay home because my vote had no respect or value.”
38-year-old Vishwas, who had a long association with the RJD and also served as the party’s Araria district general secretary, joined the Congress party before the assembly elections. According to reports, he received the Congress ticket with the support of independent Purnia MP Pappu Yadav and defeated two-time MLA Vidya Sagar Keshari by a margin of 221 votes.
Regarding his abstention, Vishwas said the RJD didn’t value him. He further stated, “However, I am fully aligned with the Congress.”
76-year-old Manohar Prasad Singh is a former police officer and four-time MLA who began his electoral journey with the JD(U) in 2010. He joined the Congress before the 2015 elections and has won the seat three times in a row as its candidate.
Regarding abstaining from voting in the Rajya Sabha elections, Singh said he found no reason to vote for the RJD candidate. He said they should have nominated a common worker. “Neither the RJD nor the Congress asked me to vote for AD Singh.”
Describing the Rajya Sabha election results as exposing the NDA’s true face, Tejashwi said, “We will decide later on what action to take against our MLA. We were short of six MLAs, while the NDA was just three short of the magic number of 41. Nevertheless, we decided to contest the elections.”
Congress spokesperson Asit Nath Tiwari called the excuses given by the four MLAs “unbelievable and reckless.” They said they didn’t vote because they were intimidated or bribed by threats from central agencies.
On the other hand, BJP state vice president Santosh Pathak said the NDA won because it had a majority. He added that if the opposition failed to muster a majority, they should introspect instead of blaming us.