Probable faces that may pose a threat to CM Nitish Kumar in Bihar Assembly elections 2020: In pics

New Delhi: The Bihar Assembly election 2020 schedule is now out and the political parties have officially started sweating over the much-anticipated event. Bihar will become the first major state to hold voting amid the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19. The Election Commission of India (ECI) said that the election will take place in three phases with the first phase beginning on October 28. The second phase will be held on November 3 and the third phase will take place on November 7. The counting for Bihar Assembly elections 2020 will be held on November 10.  

Now, we'll be looking at the probable candidates who will try to dethrone the incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. While the Janata Dal (United) supremo who became the 22nd Chief Minister of Bihar in 2015, will look to occupy the seat for the seventh time, he will definitely get a tough fight from the likes of Ram Vilas Paswan, Tejashwi Yadav, Sushil Kumar Modi and Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav.  

Ram Vilas Paswan who has been the President of the Lok Janshakti Party since its inception in 2000, is one of the leading contenders in the Bihar Assembly elections. Presently the Union Minister, these elections could probably be one of Paswan's last fight for the post of Bihar's Chief Minister. 

Paswan entered the Vidhan Sabha in 1969 from the Alauli Vidhan Sabha seat of Khagria and was also reportedly jailed for 15 months during the Emergency. After his release from the jail, he was asked by the Janta Party to contest his first Lok Sabha Elections from Hajipur which he won with a record-breaking margin in 1977. Paswan first became a Union Cabinet Minister in the year 1989. 

Tejashwi Yadav, the son of former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav, will try to fill his father's shoes as this will be the first time in almost four decades, that Lalu will not be in the play. Tejashwi is the current leader of opposition in the Bihar Legislative Assembly and the youngest opposition leader in the country. The Rashtriya Janata Dal leader was elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly from the Raghopur constituency in 2015. Tejas who has also been Bihar's ex-Deputy Chief Minister has been trying to carve out his own niche in the politics in the absence of his father and ex Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav. He served as the Deputy Chief Minister between November 2015 and July 2017.

Recently at a press conference, Tejashwi had claimed that if the Rashtriya Janata Dal forms the government in Bihar, then they will approve 10 lakh jobs in the first Cabinet meeting itself. Tejashwi who had to step down from the post after the then Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's JD(U) walked out of the Grand Alliance with RJD and Congress in the state, will look to get back to the Bihar Chief Minister's office as the head of the government of the state.

Sushil Kumar Modi, who is currently serving as the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar is continuously attacking the other major opposition parties in Bihar. Sushil is considered as one of the famous politicians in Bihar and has been the Deputy CM of the state since July 2017.  He is also seen as the main bridge between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (United). The leader is also believed to share close ties with Bihar CM Nitish Kumar. 

Sushil who is seen as the face of BJP in Bihar was the main player behind the fall of the JDU-RJD Grand Alliance government in Bihar in 2017. It was done with his continuous tirade against the RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family for four months over his alleged Benami properties and irregular financial transactions. He will now look to grab every chance and be the front face of the Bihar government.

Jitan Ram Manjhi, who formed the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) in 2015, is the leader who has held his turf in the assembly since 1980 by continuously winning elections. The 75-year old hails from the scheduled caste and has also been a Minister of Scheduled Castes and Tribes in the Nitish-led government. He first came into the limelight after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when he was handed over the CM post after Nitish resigned following the defeat in the 2014 elections. 

However, later when Nitish asked him to step down, he refused and in February 2015, Manjhi could not prove a majority in the floor test and had to step down. In 2018, he had joined hands with the Grand Alliance but the party could not win a single seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Recently, Manjhi left the Grand Alliance and has joined the NDA and will keep in sight the Chief Minister's chair.

Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, the head of the Jan Adhikar Party, has been an MP five times. He was elected MP in 1991, 1996, 1999, 2004, and 2014. Earlier in 2015 Bihar assembly elections, his party had contested on 40 seats.

Although Pappu's party could not win even a single seat in 2015, he will be aiming at making a strong comeback.

Pappu Yadav's Jan Adhikar Party and Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan`s Azad Samaj Party (ASP) have joined hands to form the Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA) to fight the Bihar Assembly elections.

"There are two alliances in Bihar, one is casteist and the other is communal. Our coalition is humanitarian. This coalition is about socialism, not politics. We will announce the face of the coalition in the coming days," Yadav was quoted as saying by ANI.

He added, "This is not the final coalition. We will come up with a common minimum programme in the next two days. We will welcome everyone who wants to save Bihar."

Pushpam Priya Choudhary is the new face that has turned up for the CM post in the Bihar Assembly elections 2020. The President of the Plurals Party will fight her first Assembly election and has completed her higher studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. Choudhary had launched the political movement "Everyone Governs". "Plurals stands against the existing political practices to redefine politics in Bihar," reads her official website. She was born and brought up in Darbhanga in Bihar.