Arjit Saswhat, son of the BJP MP from Buxar, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, filed his nomination papers on Wednesday. Senior leaders of the party, including Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Sushil Kumar Modi, C.P. Thakur and Ashwini Kumar Choubey, accompanied Arjit.

Thousands of cadres accompanied Bhagalpur Mahanagar party-president-turned party rebel Vijay Kumar Sahu as he filed his nomination papers. Vijay has been associated with the RSS for a long time and was a staunch loyalist of Ashwini- the party strongman who represented Bhagalpur several times before moving to Buxar to fight the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. Ajit Sharma from the Congress had won this seat in the by-election once Ashwini vacated it. Arjit is likely to fight Ajit Sharma, who has got the ticket yet again, as a part of the JDU-led Grand Alliance.

In an apparent bid to assuage the ruffled feelings of his cadres, Ashwini said: "I did not want a ticket for my son. The party leadership has decided to give him the ticket considering his contributions. The cadres will vote for the official party nominee."

Ravi Shankar said: "The Grand Alliance leaders, mainly Sonia Gandhi, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, made all efforts to stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi from campaigning in Bihar. But the crowd surge at Modi's four meetings has demoralised the triumvirate. The people of Bihar have made up their mind to rewrite history of the state on the call of Narendra Modi."