Patna: In the first phase of Bihar Assembly Polls 2020, polling for 71 assembly constituencies of 16 districts started at 7 am on Wednesday amid tight surveillance and tight security. About 2.14 crore voters will decide the fate of 1,066 candidates. Out of these 71 seats, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JD-U) is contesting in 35 seats, followed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 29 seats. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is contesting in 42 seats, while its coalition partner Congress has candidates in 20 seats. Let us tell you about the five seats which hold important place in the politics of the state.
Gaya: In the last 30 years, no one has been able to break this fort of the BJP. Bihar Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar has won this seat six times in a row. His stature in state politics is so important that every time the NDA government came to power, he was included in the cabinet. This will be the standard of BJP’s popularity in the seat area.
Dinara: Here is the house of JD (U) Science and Technology Minister Jai Kumar Singh. He has won twice from here and now wants to score a hat trick. From here, on the ticket of Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), BJP rebel Rajendra Singh is in the field against him. Singh, who lost the last election by just 2,600 votes, has been the former vice-president of the BJP’s Bihar unit.
Kahalgaon: The Congress has won this seat 12 times, the party’s Bihar unit chief Sadanand Singh has been declared the winner nine times between 1967 and 2015. In 2015, he defeated his nearest rival LJP’s Neeraj Kumar by 20,000 votes. Singh is so popular here that he even won the 1977 elections.
Mokama: Local leader and MLA Anant Singh is contesting from this seat on RJD ticket. From 2005 to 2010, Singh won the seat as a JD (U) candidate. When he did not get a ticket from JD (U) in 2015, he won as an independent. The Mokama assembly seat dominated by Bhumihar and Yadav has elected only a strong local leader as MLA. In the 90s, Singh’s brother Dilip became a MLA from here on a Janata Dal ticket. Since then, Singh has won the seat four times.
Lakhisarai: This seat will see a direct clash between the Congress and the BJP. After winning the seat twice in a row, Labor Resources Minister Vijay Kumar Sinha is the BJP candidate here. In the last election, there was a close battle between Vijay Kumar Sinha of BJP and Ramanand Mandal of JD (U).
