Patna: Nearly 1.5 crore voters from eight Lok Sabha constituencies of Bihar will decide the fate of 86 candidates on Friday in the sixth and final phase of general elections.
The seats where voting is taking place are Valmiki Nagar, West Champaran, East Champaran, Sheohar, Siwan, Gopalganj, Maharajganj and Vaishali, and in this phase voting will be completed for all parliamentary constituencies in the state north of Ganga.
Of these, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) is contesting from four seats, including Sheohar, which was won by the BJP five years ago. The primary contest in Sheohar is between Lovely Anand, who was elected by JD(U) from upper caste Rajputs. Beech, hoping to cash in on her family's popularity, and RJD's Ritu Jaiswal, who is traditionally taking advantage of resentment among the Vaishyas, are in the fray. BJP supporters are angry over not being given ticket to sitting MP Rama Devi, who has won from this seat several times.
In Siwan, the pitch for JD(U) and RJD has become strange with the entry of Hina Shahab as an independent, whose husband late Mohammad Shahabuddin had won the seat several times.JD(U) has refused to give ticket to sitting MP Kavita Singh and fielded Vijay Lakshmi Kushwaha to avoid showing excessive upper caste bias to strengthen its OBC base.RJD candidate Awadh Bihari Chaudhary is an experienced leader, several times MLA and also a former Assembly Speaker.
In Valmiki Nagar, the JD(U) has expressed its confidence in sitting MP Sunil Kumar, who made his debut in the bypoll necessitated in 2020 due to the death of his father Baidyanath Mahato.
His main rival is RJD's Deepak Yadav, who joined the party after quitting the BJP and whose candidature is being seen as an attempt to upset the traditional caste equations in the constituency. The JDU has also targeted its sitting MP in Gopalganj. Has expressed confidence, which is a reserved seat, where Alok Suman's bid to contest re-election has been challenged by Premnat Chanchal of Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).Chanchal, a local businessman with political ambitions, is banking on the support of the RJD, with whom his fledgling party has formed an alliance ahead of the general elections.
The BJP is contesting three of the eight seats going to polls in the sixth phase, including West Champaran, where former state president Sanjay Jaiswal is aiming for a fourth consecutive victory. Jaiswal's main rival is Congress' Madan Mohan Tiwari, who He is a former MLA from Bettiah, which is named after the town where the headquarters of West Champaran district is located.
Radha Mohan Singh, a multiple-time MP and former Union minister from East Champaran, is said to have got the ticket, while the party has given preference to candidates below 75 years of age due to their proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The opposition candidate here is VIP's Rajesh Kushwaha, who was earlier in the RJD and whose candidature is being seen as an attempt at OBC solidarity against upper caste Rajput Singh.BJP has also supported sitting MP Janardan Singh Sigriwal from Maharajganj seat. Sigriwal's bid to score a hat-trick is being challenged by Congress's Akas Prasad Singh, whose father Akhilesh Prasad Singh is a Rajya Sabha MP and heads the party's state unit.
The Congress' choice of the Bhumihar candidate is understood to be aimed at capitalizing on the powerful upper caste group's decades-old rivalry with the Rajputs.
There is also a rivalry between Rajputs and Bhumihars in nearby Vaishali, where Veena Devi's bid to retain the seat faces a tough challenge from RJD's Vijay Kumar Shukla. Veena Devi won the seat on an LJP ticket in 2019. She was the only one who was considered for the ticket by Chirag Paswan, while the party faced a split after the latter sided with her uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras.Shukla is a local muscleman and multiple-time former MLA, who has previously been with both the LJP and JD(U) and whose candidature is being seen as another attempt by the RJD to overturn the NDA equations.
Of the 1.49 crore voters who exercised their franchise on Friday, 71.08 lakh are women. The highest number of voters (20.24 lakh) are in Gopalganj while the lowest number of voters (17.56 lakh) are in West Champaran. Overall, more than 33 lakh voters are below 30 years of age, of which 2.12 lakh fall in the age group of 18-19 years. .
The constituencies where voting is taking place are also mostly rural, as evidenced by the fact that out of 14,872 polling stations, only 1,281 fall in urban areas.
The seats where voting is taking place are Valmiki Nagar, West Champaran, East Champaran, Sheohar, Siwan, Gopalganj, Maharajganj and Vaishali, and in this phase voting will be completed for all parliamentary constituencies in the state north of Ganga.
Of these, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) is contesting from four seats, including Sheohar, which was won by the BJP five years ago. The primary contest in Sheohar is between Lovely Anand, who was elected by JD(U) from upper caste Rajputs. Beech, hoping to cash in on her family's popularity, and RJD's Ritu Jaiswal, who is traditionally taking advantage of resentment among the Vaishyas, are in the fray. BJP supporters are angry over not being given ticket to sitting MP Rama Devi, who has won from this seat several times.
In Siwan, the pitch for JD(U) and RJD has become strange with the entry of Hina Shahab as an independent, whose husband late Mohammad Shahabuddin had won the seat several times.JD(U) has refused to give ticket to sitting MP Kavita Singh and fielded Vijay Lakshmi Kushwaha to avoid showing excessive upper caste bias to strengthen its OBC base.RJD candidate Awadh Bihari Chaudhary is an experienced leader, several times MLA and also a former Assembly Speaker.
In Valmiki Nagar, the JD(U) has expressed its confidence in sitting MP Sunil Kumar, who made his debut in the bypoll necessitated in 2020 due to the death of his father Baidyanath Mahato.
His main rival is RJD's Deepak Yadav, who joined the party after quitting the BJP and whose candidature is being seen as an attempt to upset the traditional caste equations in the constituency. The JDU has also targeted its sitting MP in Gopalganj. Has expressed confidence, which is a reserved seat, where Alok Suman's bid to contest re-election has been challenged by Premnat Chanchal of Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).Chanchal, a local businessman with political ambitions, is banking on the support of the RJD, with whom his fledgling party has formed an alliance ahead of the general elections.
The BJP is contesting three of the eight seats going to polls in the sixth phase, including West Champaran, where former state president Sanjay Jaiswal is aiming for a fourth consecutive victory. Jaiswal's main rival is Congress' Madan Mohan Tiwari, who He is a former MLA from Bettiah, which is named after the town where the headquarters of West Champaran district is located.
Radha Mohan Singh, a multiple-time MP and former Union minister from East Champaran, is said to have got the ticket, while the party has given preference to candidates below 75 years of age due to their proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The opposition candidate here is VIP's Rajesh Kushwaha, who was earlier in the RJD and whose candidature is being seen as an attempt at OBC solidarity against upper caste Rajput Singh.BJP has also supported sitting MP Janardan Singh Sigriwal from Maharajganj seat. Sigriwal's bid to score a hat-trick is being challenged by Congress's Akas Prasad Singh, whose father Akhilesh Prasad Singh is a Rajya Sabha MP and heads the party's state unit.
The Congress' choice of the Bhumihar candidate is understood to be aimed at capitalizing on the powerful upper caste group's decades-old rivalry with the Rajputs.
There is also a rivalry between Rajputs and Bhumihars in nearby Vaishali, where Veena Devi's bid to retain the seat faces a tough challenge from RJD's Vijay Kumar Shukla. Veena Devi won the seat on an LJP ticket in 2019. She was the only one who was considered for the ticket by Chirag Paswan, while the party faced a split after the latter sided with her uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras.Shukla is a local muscleman and multiple-time former MLA, who has previously been with both the LJP and JD(U) and whose candidature is being seen as another attempt by the RJD to overturn the NDA equations.
Of the 1.49 crore voters who exercised their franchise on Friday, 71.08 lakh are women. The highest number of voters (20.24 lakh) are in Gopalganj while the lowest number of voters (17.56 lakh) are in West Champaran. Overall, more than 33 lakh voters are below 30 years of age, of which 2.12 lakh fall in the age group of 18-19 years. .
The constituencies where voting is taking place are also mostly rural, as evidenced by the fact that out of 14,872 polling stations, only 1,281 fall in urban areas.
