The third phase of Bihar elections on Wednesday recorded low to moderate voter turnout at 53.32 per cent across 50 seats in the six central districts where the BJP-led NDA performed exceedingly well in the Lok Sabha elections last year.
Patna district recorded the lowest polling percentage at 52.82 per cent followed by 52.50 in Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad’s political turf of Saran, 53.33 in Bhojpur, 54.11 per cent in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s home district of Nalanda and 54.82 per cent in Vaishali. The highest voter turnout of 56.58 per cent was recorded in Buxar district.
In sharp contrast, re-polling at booth number 131 of Banka constituency saw 71.34 per cent voter turnout and at booth number 188 of Chakai constituency 75.57 per cent voters turned up to cast their ballot. Polling on these booths was held on October 12, during the first phase.
Although this region constitutes the home ground for the Grand Alliance’s top leaders Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad, whose sons Tej Pratap and Tejaswi Yadav are contesting from Mahua and Raghopur constituencies respectively, the NDA put up a sterling performance here in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. The BJP-led front had cornered a staggering 42.4 per cent of the vote share in these 50 seats which accounted for it leading in as many as 37 of the total 50 Assembly segments.
In the previous Assembly elections in 2010, when Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) was aligned with the BJP, they had swept this region winning 43 of the 50 seats and cornering a vote share of 43 per cent. The RJD, led by Lalu Yadav, had managed to win only seven seats then.
The BJP has thus pulled out all stops to repeat its performance in this critical phase with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself leading the campaign charge. He has created a stir with his “three idiots” remark, using a popular film title meant to denote the three Mahagatbandhan partners – Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad and the Congress.
The Bihar Chief Minister struck back, asserting that the PM had lowered the dignity of his office with the remark.
The BJP had also tried to cash in on a video of Nitish Kumar meeting a faith healer who subsequently chanted “Lalu murdabad ”. The PM made references to this footage a number of times in his rallies in the run-up to the third phase.