New DelhiOctober 14, 2025 07:43 PM IST
First published on: Oct 14, 2025 at 06:53 PM IST
In its first and second lists of candidates for the November Bihar Assembly polls, election strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) has fielded a candidate each from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) and the Scheduled Caste (SC) groups, respectively, from general seats.
Earlier this year, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief and Union minister Chirag Paswan, who belongs to the Paswan (SC) community, had also suggested that he would contest from an unreserved seat in the Bihar polls. An NDA ally, the LJP(RV) has been allotted 29 seats but it has yet to announce its candidates.
While the SC and ST candidates frequently contest from general seats in both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections across the country, their chances of victory in these seats have been slim, according to poll data since 2004, when the Election Commission (EC) began specifying the caste or tribal status of each candidate.
In Bihar, the SC/ST candidates have since won only five times from a general seat in the Assembly polls – three times in 2005, and once each in 2010 and 2015 – and never in a Lok Sabha election. While two of these Assembly poll winners were from the JD(U), one each was from the CPI(ML) Liberation and Samajwadi Party (SP), and one was an Independent.
Since 2005, a total of 1,205 SC and ST candidates from different parties have contested from general seats in the Bihar Assembly elections, which include 654 Independents. So the five winners accounted for just 0.42% of all Assembly candidates since 2005.
Year-wise number of SC/ST candidates in general seats
Among the major parties, the BSP leads the pack as it has fielded 145 such candidates in Bihar, trailed by the CPI(ML) Liberation at 34, the CPI at seven, the JD(U) at four, the Congress, BJP and RJD at two each, and the undivided LJP at one.
Overall, across India since 2004, 5,953 SC/ST candidates have contested from unreserved seats in the Lok Sabha elections, with 62 (or just over 1%) of them winning. In Assembly elections nationally, these numbers are 20,644 such nominees and 246 recorded wins (1.19%).
Since 2004, the highest number of the SC/ST winners in general seats were seen in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, at 22 (two of them women). Their numbers were 15 in 2004, eight in 2009, seven in 2014, and 10 in 2019.
The year 2023, when there were nine Assembly elections, saw the highest number of the SC/ST candidates in general seats at 1,792. It is followed by the years 2014 and 2024 (1,666 and 1,622 such candidates, respectively), which saw eight state elections each.