The elections during the day sealed the fate of 80 candidates including LJP (Ram Vilas) president Chirag Paswan, former Union Minister Rajeev Pratap Rudy and Chairman of Bihar Legislative Council Devesh Chandra Thakur.
Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Bihar H R Srinivas told media persons that an estimated 55.85 percent polling was recorded till 6 PM when voting ended in the five seats. The voting figure is expected to go up as a large number of people were waiting in the queues outside many polling booths.
He hoped the final voting figure would surpass the 57.07 percent polling recorded in the same five seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Srinivas said the polling passed off peacefully as no untoward incident was reported from anywhere in the five constituencies.
Voters boycotted polling at booth number 79 in the Aurai assembly segment and 140 in the Gaighat assembly segment of Muzaffarpur Lok Sabha seats protesting against a lack of development, he said.
Foolproof security arrangements were made to ensure free and fair polling. A total of 40,000 jawans of paramilitary forces and 18,000 homeguards were deployed.
The Lok Sabha seats where polling was held are Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Muzaffarpur, Hajipur and Saran. NDA had bagged all these seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. BJP had bagged Madhubani, Muzaffarpur and Saran while JD(U) and LJP clinched Sitamarhi and Hajipur seat respectively. The opposition then contesting as Grand Alliance had drawn blank in all these seats.
With the voting ending in five seats on Monday, the polling process has been completed in 24 of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar so far. The last two phases of elections would be held in the rest of the seats on May 25 and June 1 respectively.
The five seats witnessed straight fights between NDA and INDIA bloc candidates. Most of the parties that had contested as constituents of the Grand Alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are now contesting as partners of the INDIA bloc in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
In NDA, BJP contested in Muzaffarpur, Madhubani and Saran Lok Sabha seat while its allies JD(U) and LJP (Ram Vilas) contested in Sitamarhi and Hajipur seat respectively. In the INDIA bloc, RJD contested in four seats barring Congress which contested in the Muzaffarpur seat.
In Saran Lok Sabha seat, sitting BJP MP Rajeev Pratap Rudy contested against Rohini Acharya of RJD. She is daughter of RJD chief Lalu Prasad and had donated her kidney to him during his illness due to kidney failure.
In Hajipur, the president of LJP (Ram Vilas) Chirag Paswan is contesting against RJD candidate Shiv Chandra Ram.
Chairman of Bihar Legislative Council Devesh Chandra Thakur is trying his Luck from Sitamarhi seat on JD(U) ticket.
In Madhubani seat, Ashok Kumar Yadav contested on BJP ticket while RJD had fielded Ali Ashraf Fatmi against him. Yadav is the sitting MP from Madhubani.
In the Muzaffarpur seat, Ajay Nishad who had won as BJP candidate from here in the last Lok Sabha election, contested on Congress ticket from this seat.
Polling was held in 19 of 40 Lok Sabha seats during the first four phases of Bihar’s seven-phased Lok Sabha elections. Counting of votes will be taken up on June 4.
