Bihar Assembly Election 2020 Voting: Voting will be held on 78 seats today.
55.22 per cent people cast their votes till 5 pm in the third and final phase of assembly elections in Bihar -- a shade lower than 56.66 per cent in 2015 -- in which stakes are high for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is up against multiple rivals, including former ally Chirag Paswan.At least 1,204 candidates are in fray for the 78 assembly seats spread across 19 districts, in the final phase. Voting is also being held for the Valmiki Nagar Lok Sabha seat, where a by-election was necessitated by the death of JD(U) MP Baidyanath Mahato.
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Some of the prominent candidates in this phase are the BJP's Niraj Kumar Singh in Chhatapur seat, cousin of actor Sushant Singh Rajput; Congress's Bihariganj candidate Subhashini Sharad Yadav, daughter of former Union minister Sharad Yadav and Janata Dal United's Sarairanjan candidate Vijay Kumar Choudhary, who is also the Bihar assembly Speaker.
In Araria, RJD candidate from Jokihat seat, Sarfaraz Alam, courted controvesry after he turned up for voting with a party badge pinned to his shirt, which was a violation of the model code of conduct, news agency PTI reported. The Araria District Magistrate, PTI said, has promised action against the RJD leader. Mr Alam is the elder son of former Union Minister Mohammad Taslimuddin
The JD(U) bid to retain the Valmiki Nagar parliamentary seat by fielding Baidyanath Mahato's son Sunil Kumar is facing a challenge from Congress candidate Pravesh Kumar Mishra, a journalist-turned-politician. Like Valmiki Nagar, the 78 assembly segments spread across 19 districts also fall in north Bihar, as areas falling north of the Ganges in the state are called.
Many of these areas fall in the Kosi-Seemanchal region, where the contest between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Grand Alliance will be held under the shadow of the "Owaisi factor", given that the AIMIM has fielded candidates in many of the Muslim-dominated seats here, and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi had carried out a relatively big campaign.
As in the previous two phases, candidates of Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) are contesting in a number of seats this time, threatening the JD(U). While the NDA looked surefooted till a few months ago, the ruling coalition seemed to have taken a more cautious note as appeals to voters came from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar towards the end of the campaign.
The RJD, once considered an election-winning machine in Bihar, is hoping for a comeback, enthused by the response its chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav, 31, received in his over two dozen rallies. The RJD is part of an alliance comprising its old ally, the Congress, besides the Left parties.
This morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an appeal to voters to "set a new record" as polling began in the final phase. PM Modi, who attended 12 rallies during the campaign, had come out with an open letter addressed to the people of the state on Thursday saying he "needed" Nitish Kumar in the state so that the development of Bihar continued unhindered.
Some 2.34 crore voters spread across the 78 assembly constituencies will vote today. The full strength of the Bihar assembly is 243. The voting percentage in the second phase on 94 seats was 55.70 per cent. The votes will be counted on November 10.
In the second phase held on November 3, 94 seats were up for election, a chunk of them were BJP's strongholds in north Bihar. The key candidates included Tejashwi Yadav and his brother Tej Pratap Yadav.
Despite warnings by "extreme cynics" about holding the Bihar assembly election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation so far was reasonably good with two phases of voting completed, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said on Thursday. "There was no dearth of sceptics, no dearth of cynics, no dearth of extreme cynics who were making doomsday predictions for us. But here we are so far in a reasonably good shape," he said.
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