 "RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav waves to the gathering during a rally ahead of the Assembly elections, at Maner in Patna. He's leading from the Raghopur seat, a bastion of the Yadav family. File image/PTI")
The results of the Bihar assembly polls are out — and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has emerged with a massive victory. The NDA comprising BJP and the Nitish Kumar-led JDU did even better than the exit polls, which had predicted that the bloc would prevail handily.
Meanwhile, the Tejashwi Yadav-led RJD and its alliance, the Mahagathbandhan comprising the Congress have crashed and burned. Prashant Kishor’s new outfit, the Jan Suraaj party, has drawn a complete blank in its electoral debut.
Catch live updates from the Bihar Assembly election results here
But how did the big boys and girls of politics fare at the end of the day?
Tejashwi Yadav
Tejashwi Yadav prevailed in his family stronghold of Raghopur over the BJP’s Satish Kumar Yadav after a day of many twists and turns.
Many were stunned after Tejashwi, the son of Lalu Yadav, trailled from Raghopur around noon. Both of Tejashwi’s parents, Lalu and Rabri Devi, previously held the seat.
Yadav pulled intot the lead during the day, but Tejashwi mounted a strong comeback and pulled it off by over 14,500 votes. This was sweet revenge for the family, Yadav had unseated Rabri Devi in the 2010 polls as a JDU candidate.
Tejashwi has been holding the seat since 2015. He won the seat by 38,000 votes in the 2020 polls.
Maithili Thakur
Singer Maithili Thakur is set to become Bihar’s youngest ever MLA in her poll debut.
Even more impressively, the singer-turned-politico has become a giant killer by defeating the RJD heavyweight Binod Mishra in Alinagar. Thakur, who turned just 25 in July, received 84,915 compared to Mishra’s 73,185 votes. In the end, the margin was a healthly 11,730 votes.
The BJP fielded the singer, famed for her devotional and folk songs, just days after she joined the party. Thakur was fielded in place of sitting MLA Mishri Lal Yadav, who was denied a ticket following legal troubles.
Thakur earlier said contesting polls was the “best decision” of her life.
“I think this was the best decision of my life. And the way I have learnt in these 30 days by living among the people, I could not have learnt this from any book or any other source, and this one month has changed my entire life,” Thakur told NDTV.
Tej Pratap Yadav
Tej Pratap Yadav, who is the elder son of RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav, has placed third in the contest for the Mahua seat.
Tej Pratap, who was banished by his family and the party, was contesting the polls as part of his own outfit the Janshakti Janata Dal (JJD).
Tej Pratap got 35,703 votes compared to runner-up RJD’s Mukesh Kumar Raushan 42,644 votes. Meanwhile, Sanjay Kumar Singh from the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) was leagues ahead of the competition with 87,641 votes.
Tej Pratap had been trying to reclaim the seat that he won in 2015. After the defeat, Tej Pratap praised the good governance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar and vowed to assist the government going forward.
Tarkishore Prasad
In the Katihar seat, BJP’s Tarkishore Prasad won by a comfortable margin of 22,154 votes.
The ex-Bihar deputy chief minister, received 100,255 votes compared to his nearest rival Vikassheel Insaan Party candidate Saurav Kumar Agarwal, who got 78101 votes.
Prasad thus continued his two decade winning record in the seat, in which he has now prevailed four straight times. Prasad in 2020, he defeated his RJD rival by over 10,000 votes.
Anant Kumar Singh
Jail seems to be no bar for the JDU’s Anant Kumar Singh, who easily prevailed in the Mokama seat by 28,000 votes.
Singh, who is currently in jail on murder charges of a poll worker, bagged 91,416 votes. His nearest rival, the RJD’s Veena Devi, a former MP and wife of his old rival Suraj Bhan, got 63,416 votes.
Also known as ‘Chhote Sarkar, Singh has a strong grip over Mokama, despite a string of criminal cases. Mokama is a politically-sensitive seat with a history of high-profile battles.
Samrat Choudhary
BJP candidate Samrat Choudhary won in Tarapur constituency.
The Bihar deputy chief minister netted 122,480 votes in the polls compared to RJD Arun Kumar’s 76,637 votes, The difference was a massive margin of 45,843 votes.
Meanwhile, Santosh Singh of the Jan Suraaj Party received a paltry 3,898 votes.
The Tarapur seat, which had been won by Rajeev Kumar Singh of the JDU, was assigned to the BJP under the NDA’s seat-sharing plan.
A former RJD leader, Choudhary is the son of veteran politician Shakuni Choudhary. He had defected to the BJP in 2014 along with over a dozen MLAs, engineering a split in the Lalu Yadav-led party.
Shreyasi Singh
The BJP’s Shreyashi Singh has won the Jamui seat.
Singh, the sitting MLA, received a massive 1,23,868 votes. Her nearest rival, Shamsad Alam of the RJD, got just 69,370 votes. The margin between them was 54,498 votes.
Singh in 2020 had secured a decisive victory in the Assembly elections by defeating RJD’s Vijay Prakash Yadav by a margin of 41,049 votes.
A champion shooter who won a gold medal in the 2018 Commonwealth Games and a silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Singh will now be a two-term MLA from Jamui.
With inputs from agencies