Vikassheel Insaan Party’s Mukesh Sahani: For a former set designer, it’s the stuff of a Bollywood film

For Vikassheel Insaan Party’s (VIP) Mukesh Sahani, life has come full circle. Five years ago, he had walked out of a Mahagatbandhan press conference alleging that the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJD) had “backstabbed” him. On Thursday (October 23, 2025), sharing the stage with nearly the same set of leaders, he was anointed the Opposition alliance’s deputy chief ministerial face. 

VIP’s electoral performance since its formation in 2018 has been less than impressive. Currently, it has no sitting legislator in the Bihar Assembly. Mr. Sahani has lost two elections – 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Khagaria and 2020 Assembly election from Simri Bakhtiyarpur. In a 243-seat assembly, VIP is contesting only 15 seats. 

Despite this, Mr. Sahani has earned a public assurance from Mahagatbandhan that he will be made Deputy Chief Minister if the alliance wins. The decision is aimed at mopping up every possible vote, especially in North Bihar, where the Mahagatbandhan had a dismal performance in 2020.

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Mr. Sahani commands influence over the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) vote. EBCs – a disparate group of castes – comprise a substantial 30% of Bihar’s voters. The Nishads, or the boatmen community, form approximately 9.6% of the same, as per the 2023 State caste survey, with the Mallah sub-caste among the Nishads, to which Mr. Sahani belongs, comprising 2.6% of the population. The decision could have an impact on other smaller communities such as Bind, Manjhi, Beldah, Kewat and Turha. These communities could prove decisive in the Mithila, Koshi, and Champaran regions.

A school dropout, Mr. Sahani studied till Class 8. At 19, he left home to try his luck in the Hindi film industry. After odd jobs, he managed to find his footing as a set designer. His company Mukesh Cine World Private Limited, among many films, boasts of projects like Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Devdas (2002) and Salman Khan-starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015).

The switch from films to politics did not come easy. In 2010, he founded the Sahani Samaj Kalyan Sanstha. Seeing the crowds he was gathering, the BJP roped him in as a campaigner for the Assembly elections in 2015. In July 2018, he founded VIP. 

In the Lok Sabha polls a year later, the Mahagatbandhan offered the VIP three seats. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept Bihar and barring a lone Congress MP from Kishanganj, no Mahagatbandhan candidate could win.

On October 4, 2020, at a similar setting as Thursday’s press conference, RJD leader and Mahagatbandhan’s Chief Ministerial face Tejashwi Yadav declared that the VIP would get seats from his own party’s quota, without spelling out the number. As soon as Mr. Yadav finished speaking, the VIP supporters started raising slogans. Mr. Sahani was given the microphone to call for calm. Instead, he dramatically declared that he was “backstabbed”. At that time, one of his key demands was the assurance of the Deputy Chief Minister’s position. He walked out of the Mahagatbandhan to join the ruling NDA. 

VIP won four of the 11 seats it contested under the NDA, though Mr. Sahani failed to win the Simri-Bakhtiyarpur Assembly constituency. Despite the loss, he was accommodated in the Nitish Kumar Cabinet, in which he served as Minister for Animal Husbandry and Fisheries from November 16, 2020, to March 27, 2022. Three of the four VIP MLAs switched to BJP midway through the Assembly tenure. Lamenting the betrayal, Mr. Sahani returned to Mahagatbandhan in April 2024.