The Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) has taken a lead in the initial trends of counting of votes in the bypolls to two assembly seats.
In Mokama, RJD's Neelam Devi got 4,159 votes after the first round of counting and Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Sonam Devi polled 3,508 votes.
In Gopalganj too, the BJP was trailing as its Kusum Devi polled 1,798 votes against 2,713 of RJD's Mohan Gupta.
This is the first time that Bihar is having an electoral contest after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar walked out of an coalition with the BJP and formed government with the RJD-led bloc.
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The Mokama seat fell vacant after the disqualification of sitting RJD MLA and local strongman Anant Singh due to a conviction in a criminal case and the Gopalganj elections were necessitated due to the death of sitting BJP MLA Subhash Singh.
In Mokama, the RJD fielded Singh's wife Neelam, while the BJP fielded Sonam, the wife of another strongman Lallan Singh. In Gopalganj, the BJP fielded Kusum, the widow of Subhash, against Gupta of the RJD and Indira Yadav of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Of the 6.10 lakh voters, 3.31 lakh in Gopalganj and 2.70 lakh in Mokama, 52.3 per cent had exercised their franchise in the two seats on November 3. A total of 619 polling booths were set up in the two constituencies. A total of 15 candidates are in the fray — nine in Gopalganj and six in Mokama.
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Mokama has been the stronghold of Anant since 2005. He won the seat twice on Janata Dal-United (JDU) tickets. Anant fought as an RJD candidate in the 2020 elections and retained the seat, but he was disqualified from the assembly following his conviction in the criminal case.
(With PTI inputs)
