New Delhi: RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav survived a major BJP scare in his family bastion of Raghopur, where BJP’s Satish Kumar kept him locked in a tough contest throughout the day before the Mahagathbandhan’s chief ministerial face finally pulled ahead with a decisive lead in the final rounds of counting.
As the counting of votes started 8 am, Kumar took early leads. But Tejashwi went past him after the eight round of counting, before yielding the lead in the ninth round when Kumar was leading by about 2,200 votes.
The BJP leader maintained his lead till about the 18th round of counting. At one point of time his lead widened to more than 9,000 votes. But the gap started closing after that.
Tejashwi took a lead of a few hundreds of votes in the 19th round of counting, and extended it to more that 3,500 votes in the 20th round. Over the next 10 rounds, he consolidated on the lead, eventually winning his family pocket borough by 14,532 votes, according to the Election Commission website.
The former Bihar deputy chief minister garnered a total of 1,18,597 votes, while Kumar’s tally was at 1,04,065. Independent Baliram Singh was a distant third with 3,086 votes.
Meanwhile, Jan Suraaj’s Chanchal Kumar ended at the fourth position with just 2,399 votes.
Tejashwi, the chief ministerial candidate of the opposition Mahagathbandhan, went to the polls, hoping to be elected from the seat for a third consecutive term.
A Yadav-dominated constituency, Raghopur has been the RJD first family’s bastion, with Tejashwi’s father Lalu Prasad wining it twice (1995 and 2000). Tejashwi’s mother Rabri Devi won it thrice, the first in 2000 by-election and twice in 2005.
In fact, the constituency has remained within the family for about two decades now, except for the 2010 assembly elections, when Satish Kumar Yadav, then contesting on a Janata Dal (United) ticket, beat Rabri Devi by over 13,000 votes.
The seat came back to the RJD in 2015, when Tejashwi trounced the BJP’s Satish Kumar by more than 22,700 votes to become the deputy chief minister. In 2020, Tejashwi retained the seat, beating the same rival by over 38,000 votes.
Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder Prashant Kishor had launched his election campaign from Raghopur on 12 October, leading to speculation that he will contest from the constituency. Before launching the campaign, Kishor had even taken a sharp swipe at Tejashwi, saying that the RJD candidate would lose and would have to contest from two seats if he decided to fight from Raghopur.
“If I contest from Raghopur, Tejashwi Yadav will face the same situation Rahul Gandhi faced in Amethi,” Kishor was quoted as saying.
However, Kishor backed out of the race, citing his “responsibility to campaign for other party candidates”. Instead, he has fielded Chanchal Singh from Raghopur. Singh is the vice-president of the JSP youth wing, and is in the hotel and real estate business. He has also served as the state general secretary of the JD(U)’s business cell in the past.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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