New Delhi: RJD chief Tejashwi Yadav survived a significant BJP scare in his household bastion of Raghopur, the place BJP’s Satish Kumar stored him locked in a tricky contest all through the day earlier than the Mahagathbandhan’s chief ministerial face lastly pulled forward with a decisive lead within the remaining rounds of counting.

Because the counting of votes began 8 am, Kumar took early leads. However Tejashwi went previous him after the eight spherical of counting, earlier than yielding the lead within the ninth spherical when Kumar was main by about 2,200 votes.

Tejashwi took a lead of some a whole bunch of votes within the nineteenth spherical of counting, and prolonged it to extra that 3,500 votes within the twentieth spherical. Over the following 10 rounds, he consolidated on the lead, ultimately successful his household pocket borough by 14,532 votes, in line with the Election Fee web site.

The previous Bihar deputy chief minister garnered a complete of 1,18,597 votes, whereas Kumar’s tally was at 1,04,065. Impartial Baliram Singh was a distant third with 3,086 votes.

In the meantime, Jan Suraaj’s Chanchal Kumar ended on the fourth place with simply 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 3rd consecutive time period. 

A Yadav-dominated constituency, Raghopur has been the RJD first household’s bastion, with Tejashwi’s father Lalu Prasad wining it twice (1995 and 2000). Tejashwi’s mom Rabri Devi gained it thrice, the primary in 2000 by-election and twice in 2005.

In reality, the constituency has remained throughout the household for about 20 years now, aside from the 2010 meeting elections, when Satish Kumar Yadav, then contesting on a Janata Dal (United) ticket, beat Rabri Devi by over 13,000 votes. 

The seat got here again to the RJD in 2015, when Tejashwi trounced the BJP’s Satish Kumar by greater than 22,700 votes to change into the deputy chief minister. In 2020, Tejashwi retained the seat, beating the identical rival by over 38,000 votes. 

Jan Suraaj Social gathering (JSP) founder Prashant Kishor had launched his election marketing campaign from Raghopur on 12 October, resulting in hypothesis that he’ll contest from the constituency. Earlier than launching the marketing campaign, Kishor had even taken a pointy swipe at Tejashwi, saying that the RJD candidate would lose and must contest from two seats if he determined to struggle from Raghopur.

“If I contest from Raghopur, Tejashwi Yadav will face the identical scenario Rahul Gandhi confronted in Amethi,” Kishor was quoted as saying. 

Nevertheless, Kishor backed out of the race, citing his “accountability to marketing campaign for different get together candidates”. As an alternative, he has fielded Chanchal Singh from Raghopur. Singh is the vice-president of the JSP youth wing, and is within the resort and actual property enterprise. He has additionally served because the state normal secretary of the JD(U)’s enterprise cell prior to now.

(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)