Bihar Assembly Elections: NDA falls one short of a full ministerial sweep

As the ruling NDA steamrolled the Mahagathbandhan to retain power in Bihar, all but one of the 25 state ministers in the fray secured their seats.Deputy Chief Ministers Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, both from the BJP, won Tarapur and Lakhisarai assembly seats. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who has been a member of the legislative council (MLC), did not contest the assembly elections. Altogether 15 ministers from the BJP had contested the polls and emerged victorious.Agriculture minister Prem Kumar, a BJP veteran, retained Gaya Town for an eighth consecutive term, a record equalled by his JD(U) cabinet colleague Bijendra Yadav (Supaul).Another minister Raju Kumar Singh, who had been elected from Sahebganj in 2020 on a ticket of Vikassheel Insan Party and later defected to the BJP, retained the seat. He contested the assembly segment this time on a saffron party’s ticket.Sanjay Saraogi (Darbhanga) and Nitin Nabin (Bankipur) retained their seats for a fifth consecutive term. Other BJP ministers, who emerged victorious, were Renu Devi (Bettiah), Nitish Mishra (Jhanjharpur), Neeraj Kumar Singh ‘Bablu’ (Chhatapur), Kedar Prasad Gupta (Kurhani), Jibesh Kumar (Jale), Krishnanandan Paswan (Harsidhi), Vijay Kumar Mandal and Krishna Kumar Mantoo (Amnour) and Sunil Kumar (Bihar Sharif).However, Sumit Kumar Singh, who had been elected in 2020 as an independent candidate and inducted into the state cabinet, failed to retain the Chakai assembly seat when he sought reelection on a JD(U) ticket.Singh lost by a margin of nearly 13,000 votes to RJD candidate Savitri Devi, whom he had defeated five years ago from Chakai in the Jamui district.Son of late Narendra Singh, a former state minister and a close aide of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Sumit had held the science, technology and technical education portfolio in the outgoing government.Victorious JD(U) ministers included Sheela Kumari (Phulparas), Leshi Singh (Dhamdaha), Ratnesh Sada (Sonbarsha), Madan Sahni (Bahadurpur), Vijay Kumar Choudhary (Sarairanjan), Jayant Raj (Amarpur), Shrawon Kumar (Nalanda) and Mohd. Zama Khan (Chainpur).The ruling NDA decimated the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar on Friday to retain power, reaffirming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s enduring appeal and dealing a body blow to the Congress and ally RJD.The massive scale of the victory of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) can be gauged from the fact that its two main constituents–BJP and JD(U) — clocked a nearly 85% strike rate in 101 seats each they had contested. The alliance secured a “200 paar” win for a three-fourths majority in the 243-member Bihar assembly with the BJP emerging as the single largest party.Power of Six! How the NDA succeeded in hitting the MGB out of the park in Bihar polls



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