Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU) announced the names of candidates for the 16 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar on Sunday.

The party repeated most of its contestants in the 2019 general elections and tried to adhere to the prominent social equations in keeping with the figures brought forth by the caste-based survey.

Announcing the names of the candidates, JDU national vice-president and Rajya Sabha member Bashistha Narain Singh said: “We have finalised the list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections under the direction of our national president (Nitish Kumar) after discussing it with our party colleagues. We are a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).”

“We will not only work for the victory of our party’s candidates, our leaders, workers and colleagues are also engaged with body, mind and soul to ensure the win of other candidates of the alliance. We have faith that all the candidates on our list will win,” Bashistha added.

The 16 candidates are Sunil Kumar (Valmiki Nagar), Lovely Anand (Sheohar), Devesh Chandra Thakur (Sitamarhi), Rampreet Mandal (Jhanjharpur), Dileshwar Kamat (Supaul), Dulal Chand Goswami (Katihar), Santosh Kumar (Purena), Dinesh Chandra Yadav (Madhepura), Alok Kumar Suman (Gopalganj), Siwan (Vijaya Lakshmi Devi), Ajay Kumar Mandal (Bhagalpur), Giridhari Yadav (Banka), Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh (Munger), Kaushlendra Kumar (Nalanda), Chandeshwar Prasad (Jehanabad) and Mujahid Alam (Kishanganj).

JDU national general secretary and Rajya Sabha member-elect Sanjay Jha pointed out the caste and gender equations in the list.

“Of the total 16 candidates, six are from the other backward castes (OBC) and five from the extremely backward castes (EBC), one is from the Mahadalit category, one is from the Muslim community, while three are from the upper castes (general category castes). There are two women candidates on the list,” Jha said.

According to the list, 68.75 per cent of the JDU candidates are from the OBC and EBC categories.

The caste-based survey conducted last year had pegged Bihar’s population at 13.07 crore of which 36.02 per cent were EBC, 27.13 per cent were OBC, 19.65 per cent Scheduled Castes, 15.52 per cent were general category and 1.68 per cent Scheduled Tribes.