Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) won the two assembly seats in Bihar after bypoll results were announced on Tuesday, 2 November. The by-elections were conducted in the state on Saturday, 30 October.
JD(U) had won these seats in last year's assembly elections as well, but these seats fell vacant after the death of two of their MLAs. JDU registered a big win in the Kusheshwar Asthan seat.
Former JD(U) MLA late Shashi Bhushan Hazari's son Aman Bhushan Hazari defeated Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Ganesh Bharti by a huge margin of 12,695 votes. On the other hand, Rajeev Kumar Singh of JD(U) defeated RJD candidate Arun Sah by 3,852 votes in Munger's Tarapur seat.
Congress, which contested the by-election separating from the RJD, was in bad shape in both the seats. Congress candidate Atirek Kumar got only 5,603 votes in the Kusheshwar Asthan seat, whereas Rajesh Mishra could get only 3,590 votes in the Tarapur seat.
Kusheshwar Asthan Assembly Constituency
Congress has been contesting from the very beginning in the Kusheshwar Asthan seat. Ashok Ram, father of current candidate Atirek Kumar, was a candidate of the Grand Alliance in the last election, but he was defeated by JDU's Shashi Bhushan Hazari by 7,222 votes.
In Kusheshwar Asthan last year, the RJD-Congress alliance got a total of 46,758 votes. Whereas this time RJD got 47,184 votes despite fighting alone. Meanwhile, Congress got 5,603 votes, but despite all this, the margin of defeat for RJD was more than 12 thousand votes.
As per local sources, Aman Bhushan Hazari received a large number of sympathy votes, after having lost his father Shashi Bhushan Hazari and mother due to COVID-19.
Moreover, sources informed that the Manjhi community proved to be important for the Kusheshwar Asthan seat as they outrightly voted for NDA.
Tarapur Seat
JD(U) has held power in Munger's Tarapur seat for the last 10 years, before which MLAs of RJD, Congress, CPI and other parties have also held the seat.
In the last election, Divya Prakash, daughter of former RJD MP Jai Prakash Yadav, was made the candidate of the Grand Alliance on behalf of RJD. However, she lost the election by 7,225 votes.
The RJD-Congress alliance got 57,243 votes last time while the NDA got 64,468 votes. This time RJD fielded a new candidate from here, Arun Sah, who comes from the Bania community.
Sah got a total of 75,238 votes but lost to JDU candidate Rajiv Kumar Singh, who received 79,090 votes. Singh comes from the Kushwaha community, a majority in Tarapur.
Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav made a big bet by giving ticket to a Bania instead of a Yadav and he may have received the benefit of it, but somewhere in the game of caste combination, he fell behind Nitish Kumar.
Lalu Returns
In this by-election, RJD President and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Yadav had everyone’s attention. He had returned to Patna after three and a half years and was holding an election rally after about 6 years. On 27 October, Yadav held election meetings in Tarapur and Kusheshwar Asthan.
RJD and its opponents feared Lalu’s campaigning will benefit the party but that did not happen.
Responding to Lalu’s ‘immersion’ statement, Nitish Kumar reminded everyone of the ‘Jungle Raj’ in Bihar, by reminding people of Lalu’s ‘goli marwa denge’ statement, which seems to have been successful in dwindling Lalu’s magic on people.
Earlier, Lalu Yadav could not campaign in the assembly elections due to being in jail. Meanwhile, Tejashwi Yadav proved that RJD can perform better without Lalu, by becoming the largest party in Bihar.
Assembly elections were held in Bihar last year, after forming an alliance with the BJP. Though Nitish Kumar became the Chief Minister but his party JD(U) became the third party with 43 MLAs. RJD again emerged as the single largest party but due to not getting enough seats for their alliance, they had to sit in the opposition.
They further accused the NDA of forming the government through fraud and forgery, but the NDA kept calling it a victory for development.
To prove and maintain his credibility and hold, Nitish Kumar himself campaigned for these by-elections. He visited Kusheshwar Asthan and Tarapur when elections were not even announced.
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