The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up a winning performance in the Bihar Assembly Polls leading the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to obtain majority even though Chief Minister Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal-United (JDU) failed to garner votes in a tightly fought race.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced results of Bihar Assembly polls in the early hours on Wednesday with the BJP winning in 74 of the 110 seats it contested and JD (U) bagged 43 seats out of the 115 seats it fought. Among the NDA won an absolute majority in Bihar winning 125 seats, three more than the halfway mark needed for a victory.

RJD led by Tejashwi Yadav, put up a spectacular show and scored a win in all the 75 seats it contested to emerge as the single largest party in the 243-member Bihar Legislative Assembly. The vote share of the RJD was recorded at 23.03 per cent, the highest for any single party in the elections. It was followed by the BJP with 19.5 per cent, JDU and Congress got vote share of 15.4 per cent and 9.5 per cent respectively. The Congress could win only 19 of the 70 seats it contested and impacted the Mahagathbandhan tally. Other Mahagathbandhan allies CPI and CPI-M won two seats each while CPI(M-L) secured a win in 12 constituencies- leading to a total of win of 16 seats by the Left parties which contested in a total of 29 seats.

The AIMIM of Asaduddin Owaisi claimed five seats of the 14 seats it was in fray. AIMIM along with its allies the BSP and RLSP together contested 20 seats. The BSP managed to win one seat in Bihar. Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) which had pulled out of the NDA and contested nearly 150 seats also managed to win just one.

The First mass election in the country amidst conditions created by COVID-19 has paved the way for the return of Chief Minister Kumar for the fourth successive term in Office. Counting of votes, which began at 8 am at 55 counting centres across 38 districts of the state finally ended at around 4.05 am on Wednesday. The counting process was slow as there were 1,06,515 polling stations this time compared to 72,723 in 2015 polls as part of preventive measures against COVID19.