Announcing ASA in Patna, Ram Chandra Prasad Singh declared the party will contest 140 of Bihar’s 243 seats, despite once being Kumar’s close ally.
New Delhi: With just a year to go before the Bihar assembly elections in October-November 2025, another political party has emerged in the state following Prashant Kishor’s launch of “Jan Suraj”. Ram Chandra Prasad Singh, a former aide to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, announced his new party, Aap Sab Ki Awaz (ASA).
Singh, while announcing ASA in Patna on Thursday, said that the party’s candidate will contest 140 of the total 243 seats in the state. Both Singh and Prashant, were at one time the closest aide of Kumar but now both of them are sworn political rivals.
Singh, in his inaugural press conference following the party launch, criticised Bihar’s liquor prohibition policy, a signature initiative of Kumar that he has championed since its implementation in April 2016. Singh pledged to repeal the prohibition if elected to power.
Known as RCP, Ram Chandra Prasad Singh is a former Indian Revenue Service officer (1982 batch) who later joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1984. He became a Rajya Sabha member from Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)] and served as Union Minister of Steel in Narendra Modi’s second cabinet. He also held the position of national party president due to his close ties with CM Kumar. However, he was forced to resign from JD(U) in August 2022 and subsequently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in May 2023.
Incidentally, Kumar had broken his alliance in Bihar with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in August 2022 while alleging senior BJP leaders active in Bihar were trying to break the JD(U) from within while using RCP.
Later, Kumar rejoined the BJP-led alliance in January this year.
Singh, who was regarded as the most important person in the JD(U) during his heydays, while announcing the formation of his party attacked Kumar while praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Given his extensive experience working with Kumar and his understanding of JD(U)’s internal dynamics, Singh could pose a significant electoral threat to both the JD(U) and Kumar if he secures backing from a powerful ally.
Singh belongs to the Kurmi community (Other Backward Caste), similar to Nitish Kumar, and is widely considered someone unlikely to make a significant electoral impact given his lack of following among the electorate. Instead, he is expected to play the role of a “vote-katua,” (vote spoiler) akin to the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and its leader Chirag Paswan in the last assembly elections. In that election, LJP contested 137 seats but won only one, ultimately diminishing the vote share for JD(U) candidates and reducing JD(U)’s tally to 43 MLAs. This step was alluded by the JD(U)’s leader to a secret understanding between BJP and the LJP in order to bring down JD(U)’s seats so that the BJP could exercise more control over Kumar.
However, it is unlikely, in such a situation, that the BJP will try to enter into a similar covert understanding with RCP Singh for the next year’s election and rock the boat and force Kumar to seek realignment with the RJD and the Congress.
This is likely to be the last election that will be contested by Nitish Kumar, who is the longest serving CM of Bihar, something which he himself had announced on 5 November 2020, on the last day of campaigning for Bihar assembly elections at Dhamdaha constituency.