NDA ahead in Bihar with CM Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) on top

Patna, Jun 4 (PTI) Powered by a better-than-expected show from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), the ruling NDA was poised to retain the upper hand in the state where its candidates were leading in 34 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats.

The JD(U) was leading in all but two of the 16 seats it had contested, as per trends available by the Election Commission at 2 PM.

If the trends got translated into results, the outcome would be a strong rebuff to those who felt the longest-serving CM was the “weak link” in the NDA.

The BJP, which had kept for itself the lion’s share of 17 seats, was leading in 13 of these, with Union ministers RK Singh and Nityanand Rai among the trailing candidates.

Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) appeared to have struck gold with all five candidates, including its president Chirag Paswan, leading in respective seats by comfortable margins.

Former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha, appeared set to make Lok Sabha debut at a ripe age.

Just a few months shy of turning 80, Manjhi enjoyed an unassailable lead of over 95,000 votes.

Among the INDIA bloc partners, the RJD, which has been the single largest party in the assembly for a decade, was coming out with yet another lacklustre performance in parliamentary polls.

However, unlike the 2019 elections, when it drew a blank, it was leading in three seats, including Patliputra, where party supremo Lalu Prasad’s daughter Misa Bharti had established a comfortable lead over BJP MP Ram Kripal Yadav.

Bharti’s younger sister Rohini Acharya was trailing behind BJP veteran Rajiv Pratap Rudy in Saran by a slender margin of about 15,000 votes.

The Congress, which had contested nine seats, was leading in two, including the Muslim-majority Kishanganj which it had been winning on the trot since 2009 and the reserved constituency of Sasaram.

The CPI(ML) Liberation was emerging as the proverbial dark horse, with leads in two of the three seats it contested.

In Arrah, Sudama Prasad was ahead of Union minister RK Singh by over 30,000 votes, while Raja Ram Kushwaha’s lead in Karakat was by more than 50,000 votes.

Former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, an NDA partner who heads Rashtriya Lok Morcha, had lost the seat in 2014 and was trailing behind the Left party candidate while Bhojpuri superstar Pawan Singh, who contested as an Independent, was a distant third.