Jitan Ram Manjhi

Manjhi, minister for SC and ST welfare in Nitish's cabinet, replaced him as the 23rd Chief Minister of Bihar.

Manjhi's promotion, despite his loss in the general elections to the Lok Sabha and a miserable third-place finish in Gaya, has been criticized in the media for being a cynical political ploy of Kumar deliberately choosing a puppet whom he could control as well as to rouse casteist emotions.

Opposition leader Sushil Kumar Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party called Manjhi a "dummy chief minister", to which Manjhi responded by saying he was "not a rubber stamp."

Jitan Ram Manjhi (born 6 October 1944) is an Indian politician from the eastern state of Bihar who served as its 23rd Chief Minister from 20 May 2014 to 20 February 2015.

He was the founding President of Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM).

Previously, he had served as minister for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes welfare in Nitish Kumar's cabinet.

He has been a minister in several Bihar state governments, under multiple chief ministers like Chandrashekhar Singh, Bindeshwari Dubey, Satyendra Narayan Sinha, Jagannath Mishra, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi.

Manjhi was born on 6 October 1944 in Mahakar village were under Khijarsarai area in Gaya district of Bihar.

His father Ramjit Ram Manjhi and mother Sukri Devi were farm labourers from the Musahar community, literally meaning rat-eaters due to their rodent consumption.

He was tutored by a teacher after getting the permission of his upper-caste landlord until 7th class.

After completing his graduation from Magadh University, he worked at the Gaya telephone exchange for 13 years until his younger brother became a policeman.

He is married to Shanti Devi; the couple has two sons and five daughters.

One of his sons, Santosh Suman Manjhi, is an MLC.

Manjhi has been a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly since 1980.

He was affiliated with several political parties, Indian National Congress (1980–1990), Janata Dal (1990–1996), Rashtriya Janata Dal (1996–2005) and JD(U) (2005–2015).

Jitan Ram Manjhi entered politics in 1980.

On the ticket of the Indian National Congress party, he contested and won the assembly elections from the Fatehpur segment in Gaya district.

He became a minister for the first time in the Chandrashekhar Singh-led government in Bihar.

Between 1980 and 1990, he served as a minister of state in successive cabinets headed by Congress chief ministers Bindeshwari Dubey, Satyendra Narayan Sinha and Jagannath Mishra.

He won from the same constituency in the 1985 election, but lost in 1990.

Immediately after losing the 1990 election, Manjhi switched to the Janata Dal.

Manjhi was involved in a fake B.Ed. degree racket in Bihar as the state education minister in the RJD government during the 1990s.

As a junior minister in the Rabri Devi government, he was alleged to have given illegal permissions to institutes to run fake degree courses.

But when the Janata Dal split in 1996 and Laloo Prasad Yadav formed his own Rashtriya Janata Dal, Manjhi moved to the RJD under Yadav and won the Barachatti seat in the 1996 by-election (the previous incumbent Bhagwati Devi had left this seat to become a Member of Parliament from Gaya constituency).

From 1996 to 2005, Manjhi was a minister in the RJD state government in Bihar, first under the chief ministership of Yadav himself, and then under Rabri Devi, Yadav's wife who took the chair of CM after Yadav himself was convicted and jailed for the Fodder Scam.

In the following election in 2000, he again won the same seat on an RJD ticket.

When Yadav's RJD lost the October 2005 elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal (United) NDA coalition, Manjhi switched loyalties to the JDU.

He won the election from Barachatti putting behind Samta Deva of his previous party RJD.

However, Manjhi was asked to resign immediately on the next day when his involvement in a corruption scam surfaced.

He was later re-inducted in the state government cabinet by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in 2008 after having absolved of the charges.

During the 2008 food crisis in Bihar, Manjhi promoted eating rats as they caused damage to food grains and as rats and chickens had "equal food values, not only in terms of protein, but in all areas of nutrition".

Rat catching is common with people of the Dalit Musahar caste, to which Manjhi belongs.

In the 2010 Bihar elections, he was elected to state legislative assembly from Makhdumpur in Jehanabad district.

After Kumar split his party Janata Dal (United) from the NDA to oppose coalition leader Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Manjhi contested from Gaya but lost heavily and came a poor third behind winner Hari Manjhi (BJP) and Ramji Manjhi (RJD).

Manjhi was once considered as a close confidant of Bihar present CM and JDU supremo Nitish Kumar, but is not known for his administrative skills.

Following the JDU's poor showing in the 2014 general election, Kumar accepted responsibility for the defeat and resigned.

But after taking oath on 20 May 2014, Manjhi stated that he would "continue to seek guidance from Nitish Kumar."

He was expelled from JD(U) following the February 2015 political crisis and subsequently Jitan Ram Manjhi emerged as a major Dalit face in Bihar.

In May 2015, he announced the new political party, Hindustani Awam Morcha.

In July 2015, Jitan Ram Manjhi was accorded "Z"-plus security cover by the Union Home Ministry.