Daughter of a JD(U) minister vs son of a JD(U) minister in seat once held by Karpoori Thakur

AS FAR as debuts go, the two scions couldn’t have asked for a better stage than Samastipur, once represented in the Lok Sabha by legendary socialist leader and two-time Bihar chief ministerKarpoori Thakur. The timing too is propitious, with Bihar having finished just months ago a caste survey, a natural progression of the quota system pioneered by Thakur. Days later, the Narendra Modi government awarded Thakur the Bharat Ratna.

There is another thread connecting rivals Sambhavi Choudhary, 25, and Sunny Hazari, 32: they are both children of serving JD(U) ministers.

Sambhavi, arguably the youngest Dalit woman to contest Lok Sabha polls ever, is the daughter of JD(U) minister Ashok Kumar Choudhary and a candidate of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ramvilas) – both parties are part of the NDA – from the Samastipur seat.

Sunny is the son of JD(U) minister Maheshwar Hazari who has been fielded by the Congress – a dichotomy that the JD(U) has refused to speak about.

While Sunny is a B.Tech from NIT Patna and a businessman, Sambhavi is making a splash in this constituency – mostly rural and suburban – for her educational pedigree as well: graduation from Delhi University’s LSR College, Masters from the Delhi School of Economics, and now doctoral research on “intersectionality of gender and caste in Bihar politics”. Plus, she is the director of a school for girls in Patna.

If all that adds sparkle to her shine, Sambhavi is not expected to have too hard a time in the Samastipur seat, which the NDA has been winning since 2009. The only hitch is that the past two times, the winner was a candidate of the other LJP faction – led by Ram Vilas Paswan’s brother. While Chirag Paswan’s LJP (Ramvilas) is now the NDA’s blue-eyed faction, the one led by