New Faces Of The Left: CPI(ML), CPI and CPI(M) Balance Youth Leaders and Veterans For Bihar Elections 2025

Dhananjay (he does not use the last name) had his first major election last year, when he contested the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union election for the post of president and won, becoming the first Dalit to occupy this post. In just about a year and a half, the Bihar boy is facing another big election. The CPI(ML)(Liberation), the largest left-wing party in the state, has fielded him from the Bhore assembly seat, which the party lost by a narrow margin in the 2020 elections. 

The 28-year-old, one of the youngest contestants, had a curious turn of events. The party had considered his candidature from a constituency in Gaya, his home district in southern Bihar, but the seat went to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the Mahagathbandhan opposition alliance negotiations. Currently pursuing a PhD at the JNU School of Arts and Aesthetics, he was prepared to work for other candidates. 

Then, suddenly, the party’s Bhore candidate, Jitendra Paswan, got arrested in an old case soon after his candidature was announced. The party swiftly named Dhananjay as the new candidate from Bhore in Gopalganj district of northwestern Bihar.   

However, apart from Dhananjay, there are only two new faces in the CPI(ML)(Liberation)’s list of 20 candidates. Divya Gautam, the cousin of late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, is one of them. The 34-year-old quit a government job to pursue academics and social activism. She has been fielded from Digha constituency. The other new face is Anil Kumar, the party’s candidate from Pipra. The 51-year-old quit his job as an agricultural scientist to become a CPI(ML)(Liberation) wholetimer. 

Of the 17 other candidates, 11 are incumbent MLAs who have been renominated, and six have contested before, some successfully, some unsuccessfully. They include four youth leaders—former JNUSU general secretary Sandeep Saurav (38) from Paliganj, Shiv Prakash Ranjan (40) from Agaion, Ajit Kumar Singh from Dumraon (39) and Ranjeet Kumar Ram (40) from Kalyanpur—the first three sitting MLAs and the last contested the 2020 election unsuccessfully from the same constituency. 

On the other hand, to recover the party’s stronghold of Tarari, which the party lost in the 2023 by election in 2024, the party has fielded a veteran of Bhojpur’s land struggle, the 54-year-old Madan chandrabanshi, who spent nearly a decade in jail due to cases related to land conflict. 

Overall, Left parties have mostly fielded political and electoral veterans in the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, in which they form an important part of the opposition alliance, Mahagathbandhan. 

The average age of the 20 CPI(ML)(Liberation) candidates is 48.7 years, whereas the average age of the eight CPI candidates is 55.6 years, while the average age of the five CPI(M) candidates stands at 56.2. 

Among the CPI candidates, the 31-year-old Mohit Paswan is a new face. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Public works Committee Vaishali Zilla parishad (district council) and the vice-president of the CPI’s student wing, All India Student Federation (AISF)’s Bihar state unit. His fight would not be easy, though. Not only is there a candidate from the Congress—a leading partner of the opposition alliance—but the CPI(ML)(Liberation), too, has expressed their support for the Congress candidate, the incumbent MLA Pratima Kumari Das. 

Among other CPI candidates, three are from the former CPI bastion of Begusarai district. The 56-year-old Suryakant Paswan, the sitting MLA from Bakhari, is also a leader of the CPI-backed All India Dalit Rights Movement. Another sitting MLA, Ram Ratan Singh, who has been renominated from Teghra assembly, is a Bhumihar Brahmin and 75 years old. He is a veteran of farmers’ struggle for land. Bachhwara candidate Awdhesh Rai, a former MLA, is now 69. He lost the 2020 contest by a meagre margin of 484 votes. 

The party’s Banka and Kargahar candidates, Sanjay Kumar (61) and Mahendra Gupta (53) are former legislators, while Bihar Sharif candidate Shiv Kumar Yadav (48) and Jhanjharpur contestant Ram Narayan Yadav (52) are new electoral faces. All are party veterans. 

Of the five CPI(M) candidates, the 72-year old Rajendra Pratap Singh has been renominated from Matihani in Begusarai district, while 53-year-old Rajmangal Prasad has been fielded from Pipra—a seat that the CPI(ML)(Liberation), too, is contesting. Hayaghat candidate Shyam Bharti, 53, is a member of the party’s state secretariat, while sitting MLAs Ajay Kumar (55) and Satyendra Yadav (48) have been renominated from Vibhutipur and Manjhi, respectively.