Patna, Feb. 13: Around 55.5 per cent of 2.58 lakh voters voted in Harlakhi today to seal the fate of nine candidates in a bypoll seen as a prestige fight between the ruling Grand Alliance and the NDA.
Voter turnout was a tad lower than the 56.32 per cent witnessed during Assembly elections last year.
Votes were cast at 242 polling stations, from 7am to 5pm, under the watchful eyes of the Election Commission's observers and 1,474 polling personnel. Also, 1,434 security personnel were deployed.
No untoward incident was reported but three persons were arrested during today's poll. Counting for the Harlakhi bypoll will be held on February 16.
The Harlakhi seat fell vacant after the death of RLSP MLA Basant Kumar soon after he won the seat last November. Basant had defeated Congress candidate Mohammad Shabbir by 3,892 votes. This time, the NDA has nominated Basant's son Sudhanshu Shekhar while the Grand Alliance has repeated Shabbir.
The NDA is looking at retaining the seat to score over its rivals, who swept the Assembly polls last year with a huge majority, changing the course of the national discourse by highlighting that an alliance of major political parties in a state can successfully counter BJP and its allies.
Not leaving anything to chance, several top NDA leaders, led by Sushil Kumar Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav of the BJP, Union ministers Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP) and Upendra Kushwaha (RLSP) and several others campaigned for Sudanshu, who is also counting on sympathy votes.
If the NDA wins, it will not only heave a sigh of relief but also portray it as a vindication of its claim of severe deterioration in the state's law and order condition.
It can also project a win as a sign of the public being fed up with the Grand Alliance's governance.
The stakes are high for the Congress too. Four Congress ministers, including Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) president Ashok Choudhary, several MLAs and district committee presidents campaigned for its candidate. Shabbir, who runs a leather business in Delhi, is considered close to All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary Shakeel Ahmad Khan, who, too, campaigned for him. From among Grand Alliance partners, RJD chief Lalu Prasad held public meetings in the constituency. But chief minister Nitish Kumar did not campaign.
A win for the Grand Alliance will not only boost its enthusiasm, but also pave the way for larger experiments of uniting like-minded parties against the BJP in other states, especially in election-bound Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. In the recent past, Nitish had held a meeting with All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) chief Badruddin Ajmal in Patna to cobble together a formidable alliance in poll-bound Assam.
A Grand Alliance win at Harlakhi will also induce the partners to cobble together such an alliance at the national level ahead of the next general elections in 2019.
