The RJD on Wednesday won the Araria Lok Sabha seat in Bihar as well the Jehanabad assembly constituency while the BJP bagged the Bhabhua assembly segment in bypolls that were considered the first electoral test after Nitish Kumar dumped the Grand Alliance and joined hands with the BJP last year.
The outcome is bad news for Chief Minister Kumar whose party candidate Abhiram Sharma was beaten in Jehanabad by more than 35,000 votes by RJD's Suday Yadav.
While the BJP fielded candidates in Araria and Bhabhua, the JD(U) was in fray in Jehanabad, which is nearly 60 km from capital Patna.
In Araria, RJD's Sarfaraz Alam defeated his nearest BJP rival Pradip Kumar Singh by over 60,000 votes.
Alam had crossed over from JD(U) to Lalu Prasad's party to contest the bypoll necessitated by the death of his father and RJD MP Mohammad Taslimuddin on September 17, 2017.
Reacting to RJD’s victory, Bihar Deputy CM wrote on Twitter: “RJD got a lead of 1 Lakh 30 Thousand votes from 2 Minority dominated constituency which led to their victory in Araria.”
This led Tejashwi Yadav to ask: “Hahahaha...So now Crackers started bursting in ur mind. Oh Come Man, Just tell us then about Jahanabad? That’s majority dominated, When ur mentor & partner of immoral political crimes was with us we got less votes but when he is with U, We won by more margin..What’s ur Say?”
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on Wednesday thanked the public of Bihar for supporting the party in state bypolls.
The RJD won Araria parliamentary and Jehanabad assembly seat, while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seized Bhabua assembly seat.
Following the victory, former state cabinet minister and Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, took a dig at the BJP and said: ‘To those who say Lalu (Prasad Yadav) Ji’s name would be erased, I can say that Lalu Ji is an ideology.’
Yadav also questioned the state government over its negligence towards corruption cases involving Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.
He said: ‘The deputy chief minister is mired in corruption, but no action or probe is being conducted. We suspect that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah, Enforcement Directorate (ED), and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will speed up their probe against us after this win.’
He also took to Twitter to ‘dedicate the win to the people of the state’ and thanked them for supporting Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD.
RJD’s Sarafaraz Alam, the son of party member Taslimuddin, won the by-election in Araria, which was necessitated after his father’s death, while SP's Suday Yadav defeated Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal-United’s Abhiram Sharna in Jehanabad.
With inputs from PTI
