After being elected leader of the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) on Thursday, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav asked the Election Commission on Thursday to release videos and other documentary evidence on counting of postal ballots in 20 seats where the alliance candidates lost by a margin of less than 200 votes.
“We lost about 20 seats where irregularities were resorted to in counting postal ballots and our candidates’ queries were not heard by the Election Commission…we’ve won 130 seats and the mandate was in our favour, but the Election Commission’s results were declared in favour of NDA,” Mr. Yadav told mediapersons in Patna.
“In 2015 too, the mandate was in favour of the Mahagathbandhan, but the BJP grabbed power through the back door. The EC must satisfy the candidates who had raised queries about counting of postal ballots but were not heard…we’re again sending our demand to EC today,” he said.
Asked whether the Mahagathbandhan would try to muster numbers to form its own government, he said, “We will go to
the people who gave the mandate. If they express such a wish we will act accordingly.” Quoting election data, he claimed the NDA got only 12,270 votes more than the Mahagathbandhan.
Casting doubts on the electoral process, the RJD leader flagged narrow margin in 20 seats. “We lost 20 seats by a wafer-thin margin. In many constituencies, as many as 900 postal ballots were invalidated,” added Yadav.
While the NDA has been voted back to power with 125 seats, three more than what’s required for a simple majority in the 243-seat Assembly, the RJD-led Grand Alliance hasn’t given up hope and is in touch with at least two of its former allies who are now in the NDA camp.
The RJD has ended up with 110 seats and needs 12 more to get to the winning number in the Assembly, which, sources said, it can get if it gets the AIMIM (with five seats) and two NDA partners, the Mukesh Sahani-led Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) and former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), on its side.
Though Sahani himself lost from Simri Bakhtiarpur, his party VIP and Manjhi’s HAM(S) have four seats each. The two parties were with the Mahagathbandhan and had switched over to the NDA just before the elections.
In a nail-biting contest that went down to the wire, the NDA edged past the Mahagathbandhan to win the Bihar elections, with the BJP emerging as the dominant partner for the first time in about two decades. The NDA pulled ahead with 125 seats against the Grand Alliance’s 110 in the 243-member Assembly. For the NDA, Nitish Kumar 4.0 still looks probable despite the JD(U)’s slide to 43 seats. The RJD, on the other hand, emerged as the single largest party, winning 75 seats, one more than the BJP which won 74. Although the Left parties won 16 out of the 28 seats that they contested, the Congress’ lackluster performance proved costly for the Opposition. The grand old party could only win 19 seats out of the 70 it contested.
