Bihar: The month-long assembly elections get underway in Bihar on Thursday, with 47 out of the 243 seats going to the polls in the first of the six phases amid elaborate security arrangements.
The first phase of polling will be spread across eight districts of Madhubani, Supaul, Araria, Kishanganj, Purnea, Katihar, Madhepura and Saharsa. Over one crore seven lakh voters will decide the electoral fortune of 631 candidates, including 52 women.
Riding on the development plank, the ruling NDA, led by chief minister Nitish Kumar , seems comfortably placed to take on rival RJD and Congress, which is making a determined bid to re-establish its political credibility in a state where it has been marginalised.
After having broken free from RJD, Congress this time will be contesting all 243 seats, something which they could not do in the recent past due to alliance compulsions.
Out of the 47 seats in the first phase, the Kosi region will account for 13 while the adjoining Seemanchal — the districts bordering Nepal — boasts of 24 seats. The rest are in Madhubani.
In the November 2005 assembly elections, NDA had walked away with all seats in the Kosi belt causing a huge loss of face for RJD.
RJD, which has stitched an alliance with LJP this time, is, however, hoping for an improved outing in the Kosi region which traditionally has remained a Yadav bastion. RJD supremo Lalu Prasad may be hoping that the famed Muslim-Yadav combo voting for his party will work to the political advantage of RJD-LJP in Kosi and Seemanchal which boasts of constituencies dominated by the minority population.
Congress, on its part, has done the groundwork this time, hoping to make the electoral battle a triangular contest. It could as well give a run for money to rivals in a number of the seats. Congress general secretary and youth icon Rahul Gandhi even campaigned in the first phase to solicit support of the electorate. Even Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed election rallies in Seemanchal to woo minorities who admittedly have shed their political abhorrence for the party.
Among prominent candidates whose fate will be decided in the first phase are Bijendra Prasad Yadav, Narendra Narain Yadav, Renu Kumari Kushwaha (all ministers), state Congress president Mehboob Ali Quaiser, Ranjita Ranjan, Congress nominee and wife of incarcerated Pappu Yadav and Lovely Anand, wife of Anand Mohan, who, too is in jail.
Addressing a joint press conference on the eve of the poll, director-general of police Neelmani and state chief electoral officer Sudhir Rakesh said central paramilitary forces have been deployed in all booths. The areas bordering Nepal have been sealed.
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