The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has tasted first victory in the Bihar Assembly election. Its candidates have won from Darbhanga and Keoti Assembly seats, according to Election Commission.
While BJP leader Sanjay Saraogi won the Darbhanga seat defeating Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Amar Nath Gami by over 10,000 votes, his party colleague Murari Mohan Jha defeated RJD’s Abdul Bari Siddiqui by 8,000 votes in Keoti. Siddiqui was the finance minister in the RJD-JD(U) government in 2015.
Keoti has been a BJP stronghold in the past but in 2015, the seat went to RJD’s Faraz Fatmi.
Saraogi had won Darbhanga in the 2015 assembly election too with a margin of 7,460 votes.
Counting of votes is underway for the 243-seat Bihar assembly and as per trends on Election Commission website, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – which has BJP, Janata Dal (United) and other parties as its constituents – has an edge over the RJD-led grand alliance.
As per the Election Commission trends for all 243 seats, the NDA is leading in 128 seats and the grand alliance is ahead in 104. The counting of votes will continue till late evening on Tuesday, Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer HR Srinivasa said.
“Around 4.10 crore votes were cast. Earlier there used to 25-26 rounds of counting, this time it went up to around 35 rounds. So the counting will continue till late evening,” said Srinivasa.
“Needless to say that there has been an absolutely glitch-free counting process so far. Slightly more than 1 crore votes have been counted in Bihar which means that there is significant ground to be covered yet,” said Deputy Election Commissioner Ashish Kundra.
The BJP is emerging as the single-largest party in Bihar. It is currently leading in 76 seats, while its alliance partner JD(U) in 48. While the BJP contested on 110 seats, the JD(U) fielded its candidates in 115 seats. The RJD, which had won the highest number of seats in the last Assembly election in 2015, is at number 2 currently – leading in 65 of 144 seats it contested.
So, the JD(U) has been relegated to the third place, as per the latest trends.
The fate of 3,755 candidates across 243 seats will be decided with the Election Commission setting up a total of 55 counting centres, housing 414 halls, spread across 38 districts of the state that voted in three phases on October 28, November 3 and November 7.
