Patna: Despite a fiercely-contested battle, the Bihar by-elections results failed to indicate any decisive swing as both the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan and BJP-led NDA retained their respective seats. All winning candidates were relatives of the sitting representatives whose sudden demise necessitated the by-polls.
However, the Mahagathbandan can still claim a moral victory as Nitish Kumar’s return to the NDA fold seems to have failed to get winning votes.
Sarfaraz Alam of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) won with a margin of over 63,000 votes in the Araria Lok Sabha seat as he beat Pradip Singh of BJP. His father Taslimuddin’s winning margin was over 1.4 lakh in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when the Modi wave was at its peak.
However, the BJP, RJD and JD(U) had fought the 2014 General Elections separately.
For most of the early rounds of counting, Sarfaraz was trailing but after the eighth round he picked up and continued to maintain a lead. However, BJP candidate Pradip Singh gave him a tough fight, which shows the return of Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) in NDA fold did result in transfer of some votes, but not as expected. The JDU candidate came a close third to BJP in the last general election and the combined vote of JD(U) and BJP was much more than what the RJD had polled.
On the other hand, Araria was a prestige seat for RJD leader Tejaswhi Yadav as he had a mighty task of retaining the seat, especially when his father Lalu Prasad Yadav is serving a jail sentence. Wednesday’s results show that the Muslim-Yadav combination strongly backed the RJD candidate here. Muslims and Yadavs constitute more than 40% and 10% of the electorate in the constituency.
Tejashwi had also roped in Dalit leader Jitan Ram Manjhi, who backed out of the NDA right before the polling.
After the 2014 general election debacle, Lalu and Nitish had joined hands for the 2015 Assembly elections and registered a thumping victory against the BJP. Though after less than two years of forming the Bihar government together, Nitish parted ways and joined hands with his old friend BJP. However, this reunion has failed to translate to electoral victory in the two Assembly segments.
The RJD, on the other hand, has retained Jehanabad Assembly constituency as its candidate Kumar Krishna Mohan alias Suday Yadav defeated Abhiram Sharma of Janata Dal (United) by 35,343 votes. Suday’s father Mundrika Singh Yadav represented the seat before his demise.
RJD’s winning margin here is more than the last elections and Manjhi is learnt to have played crucial role here.
BJP’s Rani Rinki Pandey sailed through from Bhabhua Assembly constituency defeating Congress’ candidate Shambhu Patel by 14,866 votes. She secured 64,413 votes against 49,647 of the Congress, again less than the total votes polled by JD(U) and BJP in the 2015 Assembly elections.
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