In the first phase of high stake elections for 49 assembly seats, Bihar polled a historic 57% votes, up almost 7 per cent than 2010 assembly elections for the corresponding seats.
In comparison, the polling percentage was 50.85% in 2010 assembly elections and 55% in last year's Lok Sabha elections in which BJP emerged as the single largest party with 22 seats.
Election Commission has attributed Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme and over 99% coverage of voter slip distribution as the reason for record voter turnout.
"The large deployment of central armed police forces and their presence on every polling station is also one of the reasons why people came out to vote without fear," said deputy election commissioner, Umesh Sinha.
The election commission had deployed over 63,000 polling officials and over 55,000 CAPFs personnel in 14,413 polling stations of which 2,255 were in LWE affected areas.
While it remains difficult to predict in whose benefit the substantial increase in voting percentage would translate, the BJP camp was upbeat after a video showing senior minister of Nitish government, Awadhesh Prasad Kushwaha, accepting Rs four lakh as bribe went viral.
Though Nitish Kumar asked Kushwaha to resign as soon as the sting went viral and is set to withdraw his candidature from Pipra constituency, the incident has left the BJP camp upbeat.
BJP claims that the alleged act of Kushwaha, accepting Rs 4 lakh as an advance bribe from a Bombay-based firm for favours to be repaid later has changed the electoral discourse in the state in their favour and its impact will be seen in remaining phases also.
But many observers claim the video expose will not have much impact on the ground as Biharis have become immune to such allegations and counter during elections and do not take such things on face value.
They say women who polled higher than the men can be a major deciding factor. Women voters polled 59.5% in comparison to men who polled 54.5%.
While both Nitish and Modi can claim to have captured women's imagination for votes, Nitish's claim has more strong basis as he started several schemes to benefit women including linking 1.5 crore women with Self Help groups (SHGs) in July this year, besides giving bicycles for class IX girl students programme that increased girls admission from 44 to 56 per cent during one year of operation.
For BJP, women say a reason to vote for them because of Modi's major emphasis on toilet for women that he related to their honour.
BJP also scored an advantage by being allowed by the election commission to hold Modi's rally in Jehanabad and Bhabua amid strong protests of opposition parties.
The grand alliance on Sunday had petitioned the Election Commission (EC), seeking a ban on live telecast of Modi's election rallies on days of polling saying it was a clear violation of Section 126 of the Representation of People's Act (RPA), 1951 that prohibits displaying to the public any election matter by any means — television or other apparatus — during the 48 hours that end with the conclusion of the poll in a constituency.
A BJP delegation met the EC on Monday evening to counter grand alliance's claim.
