#BiharPolls: RJD’s Internal Split Turns Bihar’s Parihar into a Three-Way Women’s Fight
RJD rebel sparks fierce female showdown in Parihar.
In Bihar's Parihar constituency, near the revered Maa Janki temple undergoing an ₹800 crore renovation initiated by Home Minister Amit Shah, three formidable women are locked in a high-stakes assembly election contest. Incumbent BJP MLA Gayatri Devi aims for a third consecutive victory, facing RJD candidate Smita Purbe and rebel Independent Ritu Jaiswal, turning the seat into a symbol of women's political empowerment amid the state's heated campaign.
Gayatri Devi, a Yadav leader holding the seat since 2015, previously defeated RJD's Ram Chandra Purbe and narrowly edged out Ritu Jaiswal by about 2,000 votes in 2020. Her husband, Ram Naresh Yadav, won the newly delimited constituency in 2010. Confident of splitting the Yadav vote, Gayatri asserts that the rivalry between her opponents has significantly boosted her prospects for a hat-trick.
Ritu Jaiswal, RJD's state women's wing president and a former panchayat chief who left a Delhi job to serve her village, is running as an Independent after the party denied her the ticket. She cites overwhelming local support and her narrow 2020 defeat as reasons for her candidacy, having also contested unsuccessfully in the 2019 Sheohar Lok Sabha polls. Both Ritu and Smita hail from the influential Vaishya community.
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Smita Purbe, daughter-in-law of veteran RJD leader Ram Chandra Purbe who represented neighboring Sonbarsa multiple times, banks on the party's traditional Muslim-Yadav alliance to reclaim the seat. Muslim voters largely favor her, with locals noting Ritu might have won had RJD nominated her. The split in opposition votes complicates dynamics in this constituency plagued by migration, unemployment, and floods despite improvements in roads, electricity, and infrastructure like a Kendriya Vidyalaya.
As campaigning intensifies, the three-way battle highlights shifting caste loyalties and grassroots demands, with Gayatri positioning herself as the beneficiary of the RJD rift. Voters grapple with persistent job scarcity amid development gains, making Parihar a microcosm of Bihar's complex electoral landscape where women's leadership takes center stage.
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