It is often said that without Motihari town and Champaran district, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi might not have become the global icon he is remembered today - Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1917, just two years after his return from South Africa, Gandhi arrived in Motihari to lead the first Satyagraha movement against the colonial British rulers. He spearheaded the farmersтАЩ rebellion against the exploitative indigo plantation system imposed by British landlords. The rest, as they say, is history. The movement that began in Champaran ultimately played a central role in India achieving independence three decades later.
Motihari, the district headquarters of East Champaran (Purvi Champaran), is part of the East Champaran Lok Sabha seat, which comprises six assembly segments. Since its establishment in 1951, Motihari has elected its representative to the Bihar Legislative Assembly 17 times. Initially, it was a Congress stronghold, with the party winning seven out of eight elections between 1952 and 1980. The only exception was in 1969 when the Bharatiya Jana Sangh emerged victorious.
Later, Motihari became a communist bastion, with Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Triveni Tiwari winning the seat three times in a row between 1985 and 1995. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) won the seat once in 2000 before it turned into a BJP stronghold in 2005. Since then, the BJPтАЩs Pramod Kumar has won the Motihari seat five consecutive times, with increasing and comfortable margins with each election, while the RJD has consistently finished a distant second.
The BJP appears to be in a strong position across the entire Purvi Champaran Lok Sabha seat. In the 2020 elections, the BJP won four of the six assembly segments, while its ally, the JD-U, won one seat, and the RJD secured one. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP led in five of the six assembly segments, including Motihari, with the RJD-led MahagathbandhanтАЩs constituent, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), leading in one segment.
The Motihari Assembly constituency can be described as a rural-dominated seat, with an overwhelming 71.40 percent of voters residing in rural areas, compared to just 28.60 percent of urban voters.
The Scheduled Caste and Muslim communities are almost equally represented, constituting 13.48 percent and 13.30 percent of the electorate, respectively.
As of January 1, 2024, Motihari had 3,31,575 registered voters. This number is expected to increase further when the Election Commission releases the revised 2025 voters list in the coming months.┬а
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(Ajay Jha)
