The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won majority in the Bihar assembly elections in an extremely close race.
The NDA emerged winner with 125 seats, with BJP winning 74 of these, the Janata Dal (United) of Chief Minister (CM) Nitish Kumar 43, the Vikassheel Insaan Party four and Hindustan Awaam Party (Secular) four as counting was completed early Wednesday morning. This puts NDA just above the requisite 122 majority mark in the 243-strong assembly.
The Rastriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its allies won 110 seats. The RJD finished as the single-largest party with 75 seats, while the Congress won a mere 19 seats. Of the 29 seats the left parties had contested, they won in 16, with the CPI (ML-Liberation) winning 12 of them, The Wire reported.
The BJP’s vote share is 19.5%, the JD(U) won 15.4%, the RJD 23.1% and the Congress 9.5%.
The Mahagatbandhan or Grand Alliance, led by the RJD and its young leader Tejashwi Yadav, had been hoping that the exit polls are proven true and CM Nitish Kumar is unseated after 15 years of rule – but that did not happen. The Magatbandhan comprises the RJD, Congress and left parties, and most exit polls had given the alliance a clear edge over the BJP-JD(U) coalition. The parties have alleged widespread counting malpractices.
Meanwhile, Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janashakti Party has just a single seat.
The state has 243 assembly constituencies. There were 3,558 candidates in the fray, including 370 women and one transgender person. The voter turnout this year was 57.05% – marginally higher than the 56.66% of the 2015 assembly elections.
