Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar suffered a huge setback today, losing three of the five assembly seats where by-elections were held in the state. The sole Lok Sabha seat which went to the polls, Samastipur, was retained by ally Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party.
The biggest takeaway from the bypolls was that the voters don't like dynasty politics - be it of the Congress or the Janata Dal United. One after the other, candidates with links to elected leaders, toppled across the state.
The list included JDU's candidate Ajay Singh in Daraunda. Mr Singh is the husband of Kavita Singh, the party's parliamentarian from Siwan.
In Banka, MP Giridhari Yadav could not ensure the victory of his brother Laldhari Yadav, who lost to the Rashtriya Janata Dal's Ramdeo Yadav.
And in Kishanganj, Sayeda Banu, the mother of Congress MP Dr Jawed, came a poor third.
Kisanganj made history of sorts today, helping Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM open its account in the state. The party's candidate, Kamrul Hoda, won over his BJP rival Sweetie Singh by over 10 thousand votes.
This was the third time the AIMIM is contesting in the state, where 16 per cent of the population is from the Muslim community.
Nitish Kumar lost the third seat -- Simri Bakhtiarpur -- to the RJD as well. Zafar Alam, the winning candidate, was fighting the polls for the first time.
Here the spoiler was the son of Mallah, Mukesh Nishad of the Nishad Party. Dinesh Nishad got 25,525 votes, which could otherwise have gone to Janata Dal United candidate Dr Arun Kumar. It also put a question mark on Nitish Kumar's influence on the Economically Backward Classes.
The elections also revealed that while Lalu Yadav's the RJD managed to retain its Muslim vote bank, Tejasvi Yadav could not transfer the Yadav votes to Umesh Singh, whom the party was backing in Daraunda.
Umesh Singh got just 20,911 votes, while BJP-backed Independent candidate Vyas Dev Singh got 51,207 votes and won by a margin of over 27,000 votes.
Party sources said the indication was that the BJP's rank and file worked against the official JD(U) candidate Ajay Singh and ensured the victory of Vyas Dev Singh - another example of the growing rift between the allies.
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