Bihar polls: BJP's RK Singh urges people not to vote for 'tainted' candidates

Former Union minister R.K. Singh has called upon voters in Bihar to reject candidates with criminal backgrounds — including those fielded by the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) — in a rare and stinging rebuke from a senior BJP leader to his own camp.

Singh, who served as Union power minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second Cabinet, said voters should not back tainted candidates “even if they belong to your caste”, and that if all contenders in a constituency were discredited, people should “opt for NOTA (none of the above)”.

In a post on social media late on Sunday night, Singh named several NDA nominees, among them Bihar deputy chief minister Samrat Choudhary, contesting from Tarapur, and Anant Singh, the Janata Dal (United)’s candidate from Mokama, a gangster-turned-politician with a long criminal record.

The 71-year-old leader, who has been politically sidelined since losing the Arrah Lok Sabha seat in 2024, also listed JD(U) candidates from Jagdishpur and Sandesh — both within his former constituency — and accused them of having serious cases pending against them. He further named RJD’s Deepu Singh (Arrah) and Osama Shahab (Raghunathpur), sons of politicians with criminal histories.

He went on to cite Vibha Devi (JD-U, Nawada) and Veena Devi (RJD, Mokama) as examples of “proxy candidates” contesting on behalf of their convicted husbands. Singh shared details of the charges against several of these figures, saying it was imperative that “voters draw a line between politics and crime”.

A retired IAS officer of the Bihar cadre and former Union home secretary, Singh has in the past courted controversy for taking public positions at odds with his party.

In 2015, ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections, Singh had accused the BJP of distributing tickets to criminals, saying in an interview in Arrah that “some of the people we have given tickets to belong in jail, not in politics”. The remarks drew sharp criticism from the BJP state leadership, though Singh stood by his comments, saying he “could not support criminalisation in politics”.

Again in 2018, as a serving minister, Singh publicly acknowledged that “corruption exists at lower levels” in the government, a statement seen as contradicting the Modi administration’s zero-tolerance stance. The minister had at the time said corruption “was not systemic but still prevalent”, prompting embarrassment within the BJP ranks.

More recently, during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, Singh reportedly expressed disquiet over the “over-centralisation of power” within the party and the “lack of space for honest internal criticism”, according to comments he made at a closed-door meeting with supporters in Arrah.

His latest outburst, therefore, continues a pattern of independent — and often inconvenient — interventions from a bureaucrat-turned-politician who has long prided himself on his candour.

While there was no immediate reaction from the BJP or the JD(U) to Singh’s remarks, political observers in Patna noted that his criticism underscores the unease within sections of the NDA over its candidate choices ahead of the Bihar Assembly polls.

For now, Singh’s comments have reignited debate over the persistence of criminalisation in Bihar politics — an issue he has repeatedly raised since entering public life after his retirement from the civil service in 2013.

With PTI inputs