The counting of votes has been started from 8 am today. The Bihar assembly election, which was held in three phases, is India’s first election amid the covid-19 epidemic. According to the Election Commission, 57.05 percent of the people have voted this time, which is more than 56.66 percent in 2015.
The main contest is between the National Democratic Alliance led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar i.e. the NDA and the grand alliance led by Tejashwi Yadav.
Among the NDAs are Janata Dal United (JDU), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and smaller parties Hindustani Awam Morcha (Hum) with Vikas Insaan Party (VIP). At the same time, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Congress and the three leftist parties in the Grand Alliance are the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) i.e. CPM and the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist (Liberation).
On the other hand, Lok Janshakti Party is part of the NDA at the center, but this time in Bihar it is contesting elections alone. LJP is commanded by Chirag Paswan and he has targeted Nitish Kumar throughout the election campaign. Nitish Kumar is the chief ministerial candidate from the ANIDA, while 31-year-old Tejashwi Yadav from the Grand Alliance.
Nitish Kumar contested with RJD in 2015 elections and Tejashwi Yadav became deputy chief minister. In 2017, Nitish Kumar once again joined the NDA. In the 2015 assembly elections, Nitish Kumar, RJD and Congress alliance got a landslide victory.
But in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the NDA was ahead in 223 of the total 243 assembly constituencies. According to the exit poll, there is a strong anti-incumbency against Nitish Kumar in Bihar.
Nitish Kumar is the Chief Minister of Bihar for the last 15 years. If the estimates of the exit poll prove to be correct, will JDU or BJP be the victim of the anti-incumbency wave? This time JDU is contesting 122 and BJP 121 seats.
Both these parties have given some seats to Jitan Ram Manjhi and Mukesh Sahni for their part. The LJP fielded 135 candidates in Bihar. For the first time since 2005, the LJP is contesting so many seats in Bihar. The exit poll shows LJP being marginalized. 84% of LJP candidates are in the election ground against JDU
The term of the 2015 Legislative Assembly ends on 29 November. The voting for the first phase was on October 28 on 71 seats. The second phase was polled in 94 seats on November 3 and the last phase on 78 seats on November 7.
Important leaders whose fate is to be decided today are Nandkishore Yadav (Patna Sahib) of BJP, Pramod Kumar (Motihari), Suresh Sharma (Muzaffarpur), Shravan Kumar (Nalanda), Jaikumar Singh (Dinara) and Krishnanandan Prasad Verma (Jehanabad). Apart from this, Tejashwi Yadav’s elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav is from Hasanpur and former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi is also in the fray.
