Bihar Elections 2025: Shashwat Kedar Pandey Named Congress Candidate For Narkatiaganj
The Congress party has announced Shashwat Kedar Pandey as its official candidate from Narkatiaganj Assembly constituency in West Champaran for the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections. His name was part of the party’s second list of five candidates, released on Saturday, adding to the 48 declared earlier in the week. Alongside Pandey, the list includes Mohammad Kamrul Hooda (Kishanganj), Jitendra Yadav (Purnia), Mohan Srivastava (Gaya Town) and Mohammad Irfan Alam (Kasba).
The nomination of Shashwat Pandey is being viewed within party circles as both a nod to the region’s historical Congress legacy and a strategic move to consolidate upper-caste and youth support. Pandey, 38, carries with him a formidable political lineage. His grandfather, Kedar Pandey, served as Chief Minister of Bihar between 1972 and 1973 and was later Railway Minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet after winning the Bettiah Lok Sabha seat in 1980. His father, Dr Manoj Pandey, also represented Bettiah as a Congress MP in the mid-1980s.
An alumnus of Mayo College, Ajmer, Shashwat completed his MBA from Mahatma Gandhi Open University. He previously contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Valmikinagar as the Grand Alliance’s nominee, positioned then as the sole Brahmin candidate of the alliance in Bihar. His candidacy is also linked to another Congress legacy — he is married to Shivani, great-granddaughter of Kamal Nath Tiwari, a noted freedom fighter and parliamentarian from Champaran.
Local Congress leaders believe Shashwat’s name will help the party reconnect with its old support base in the Champaran region, where the Congress once held considerable sway.
Narkatiaganj, which forms part of the Valmiki Nagar Lok Sabha constituency, is a politically significant seat with an electorate of around 2.65 lakh. Created under the 2008 delimitation order, it comprises a mix of rural and semi-urban areas, including the Narkatiaganj notified area and gram panchayats across Narkatiaganj and Lauriya blocks. Electoral contests here have traditionally been closely fought. The BJP won the seat in 2010, the Congress reclaimed it in 2015, and BJP’s Rashmi Varma emerged victorious in 2020.
