Senior BJP leaders, including Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, on Sunday urged the state's Kayastha community to actively participate in the upcoming Assembly elections with the party.

The leaders gathered at SK Memorial Hall under the banner of Kayastha Samagam to gain the community's support. Among the prominent faces present were Ravi Shankar, the Union minister of communications and information technology (IT), Rajya Sabha MP R.K. Sinha, MLAs Nitin Navin, Arun Kumar Sinha, Rashmi Verma and MLC Sanjay Mayukh.

All the leaders were from the Kayastha caste, an urban and educated community in Bihar. Though the Kayasthas account for less than 2 per cent of the state population, they have high presence in the urban areas of Patna, Muzaffarpur and Motihari.

At the meeting, the senior leaders took the opportunity to woo the community. While none of the leaders gave a clarion call to the community to support the BJP in the Assembly elections, they did send out a message that its representation in political circles has come down.

Addressing a gathering of 2,000 and odd people, Union minister Ravi Shankar said: "The BJP has always given due importance to Kayasthas. Both in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi's governments, Kayasthas have been given important portfolios."

In the Vajpayee era, Yashwant Sinha held the finance portfolio, while Modi has handed Ravi Shankar the important communications and IT ministry.

Sources said the presence of the senior BJP leaders assumed importance on Sunday, as of the 243 MLAs in the Assembly, only three MLAs - Nitin, Arun and Rashmi - are from the Kayastha community.

The function was organised by BJP Rajya Sabha MP R.K. Sinha, who is also the director of SIS, the largest security agency in the Bihar-Jharkhand region. He said: "Kayasthas' biggest weapon is their knowledge and it is considered that pen is mightier than swords." The Rajya Sabha MP urged his community members to fight against the dowry system and also become entrepreneurs so that they were job providers rather than job seekers.

Sources said the organisers had invited Kayastha leaders from other parties, too, such as JDU MLC Ranbir Nandan and former Union minister from Jharkhand Subodh Kant Sahay but none of them attended the function.