Patna: Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP candidate Samrat Chaudhary is leading from the Tarapur constituency assembly with a margin of over 2,600 votes as of 10.30 am, according to the data on the Election Commission of India’s official website.
As of 10:30 am am, Chaudhary has received 8,647 votes, while the RJD candidate, Arun Kumar, has received 5,957 votes.
BJP candidate and folk singer Maithili Thakur, a young face in the fray, is also leading from the Alinagar assembly constituency, with a margin of over 4,000 votes.
As of 10:30 am am, Thakur garnered 11,082 votes; however, only three rounds of vote counting have been completed out of 32.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sinha, who was earlier trailing from the Lakhisarai seat, is now leading from the seat with a slight margin of 788 votes. As of 10.30 am, he has polled 6,151 votes.
The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has crossed the halfway mark of 122, while the Opposition’s Mahagathbandhan is trailing behind as per the Election Commission of India.
According to the leads on 229 seats, the NDA was leading at 167 seats, with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s lead on 71 seats and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) ahead in 72 constituencies. Chirag Paswan’s LJP(RV) was leading on 18 seats.
The BJP and the JD(U) have maintained a high conversion rate of 67% and 64%, respectively.
Mahagathbandhan was trailing behind, with a lead of just 60 seats. While Tejashwi Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was leading on 43 seats, its allies showed an underwhelming performance as per the early trends. Congress was leading in 8 seats, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation was leading in 6 seats.
Meanwhile, AIMIM is ahead in two seats.
Counting of votes for all 243 constituencies began at 8 am amid tight security. Officials began tallying postal ballots, with the counting of EVM votes scheduled to start at 8:30 am.
Elaborate security arrangements are in place, with 4,372 counting tables and over 18,000 counting agents overseeing the process. Most exit polls predict a comfortable victory for the NDA, with some projecting the Mahagathbandhan to win.
According to the ECI’s official press note, 2,616 candidates and 12 recognised political parties participated in the two-phase polls on November 6 and 11, and none requested repolling in any constituency.
The main election contest in the Bihar elections is between the National Democratic Alliance, led by CM Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav’s Mahagathbandhan. In the 2020 election, the NDA secured a majority in the assembly and won 125 seats, with Nitish Kumar again taking oath as Chief Minister. However, in August 2022, Nitish Kumar broke the alliance with the BJP and resigned as Chief Minister, forming a government with the RJD-Congress-led Mahagathbandhan.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ’s editorial team and auto-generated from an agency feed.)