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Bypoll results show NDA's decline in Bihar

Our Correspondent in Patna

All the three parties - the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Janata Dal-U and the Marxist Coordination Committee - have retained their seats in the by-poll held in Bihar.

The only difference is that while the RJD and MCC - the latter supports the government from the outside -- increased their margin of victory, the JD-U candidate Sushil Kumar Singh could not do so.

The victory of Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi from Raghopur by a huge margin of 61,819 votes and that of MCC's Arup Chatterjee by over 16,204 votes once again confirmed the downward slide of the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar.

While Laloo Yadav won by about 29,128 votes from Raghopur in the assembly election held in February, his spouse more than doubled the margin, getting 38,629 votes more than the RJD chief. The increase in margin is significant, given the fact that Raghopur falls under Hajipur parliamentary seat which is represented by none other than arch-rival, Union Telecommunications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan.

The crossing over of the JD-U candidate in the last election, Vishnudeo Rai, himself a Yadav, and the clash among Rajputs who form a sizeable upper caste vote chunk, put paid to the NDA's effort to give a decent fight. The husbands of the JD-U candidate Veera Devi and independent Shanti Devi were at daggers drawn throughout the campaign. While Shanti's husband survived a murderous attack during electioneering, her driver died on polling day. Veera's husband Brijnath Singh is a notorious outlaw and is a close relative of Shanti's husband. Thus the political clash was an extension of the family feud in this case.

The NDA was quick to read the straws in the wind, and save Paswan and Nitish Kumar, none of the central leaders come to campaign in the constituency.

Equally spectacular is the victory of the MCC's Arup Chatterjee who defeated Subrato Sengupta of the Forward Bloc. While his father, Gurudas, won by a wafer thin margin of 781 votes in February, the victory of Chatterjee Jr is a slap in the face of the mafia whose support for the NDA in South Bihar is a known fact. The common NDA candidate Ashok Mandal was pushed to the third position, and got only 19,013 votes.

The JD-U candidate, Susheel Singh, managed to retain Jamui, but that was possible more because of the division of backward votes between the runners-up, the RJD's Vijay Prakash Yadav and Umashankar Bhagat, an independent. Singh got fewer votes than the JD-U general secretary Narendra Singh (who later quit the seat) in February.

A beaming Laloo Yadav told mediapersons in Hajipur, where he accompanied his wife to collect the victory certificate, that "Rabri has won in the people's court despite the malicious design of the Vajpayee government to defame her. We will win the court battle too."

However, the Opposition is yet to concede defeat. Leader of Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, ascribed her victory to the misuse of government machinery, and challenged her to resign as chief minister and recontest the elections.

But he has nothing to say about the BJP's complete rout in the South Bihar constituency of Nirsa where it almost won in February. It maybe that the sympathy factor played a role in Arup's victory, as his father was gunned down by the coal mafia last April; but what sounds a bit intriguing is, the BJP's wipeout while the little known Forward Bloc, managed to finish second.

MCC's supporters are of the view that the voters punished the BJP or the NDA for its clandestine support to the mafia.

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