June 2: The Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat bypoll passed off peacefully barring stray incidents of skirmishes and boycott of voting at two of the 1,476 polling stations.
“No major untoward incident was reported from anywhere as 47 per cent voters exercised their franchise. The figures might go a bit up as the final numbers are still coming in from the far-flung booths,” said Abhijit Sinha, the Saran district magistrate-cum returning officer of the Lok Sabha bypoll.
Santlal, a voter of Amdarhi village under the Ekma Assembly segment, echoed Sinha. “There was no pressure or coercion. We cast our vote without any fear,” he said.
The JD(U) thanked the voters for “maintaining” peace during the poll. The Congress, on the other hand, complained of “misuse of official machinery” by the ruling establishment.
After the polling was over, the RJD issued a communiqué claiming that its candidate was set to register massive victory.
The polling percentage recorded in today’s bypoll across the constituency spread over north Bihar districts Saran and Siwan was almost in conformity to the polling trend in the seat in the past despite the voters of booth number 7 and 64 under the Majhi and Maharajganj Assembly segments, respectively, boycotting the by-election to express their grievances. The seat had recorded 46.16 per cent polling during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
At Rasulpur village under the Ekma Assembly segment, two rival groups resorted to stone-pelting near a booth. But the security forces intervened and pacified the situation, sources in the administration said, adding that no one was grievously hurt. Eleven persons were arrested.
The Maharajganj bypoll snowballed into a prestige fight for the two political archrivals — chief minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad. The main contenders in the fray are the RJD’s Prabhunath Singh and the state’s education minister and JD(U) nominee, P.K. Shahi. The Congress’s Jitendra Swami entered the poll fray at the eleventh hour, making it a triangular contest.
Several central leaders of the grand old party of India descended on Maharajganj to campaign for him but Nitish and Lalu took the cake away in electioneering. Both sweated out hard to win the seat and secure a psychological advantage ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, due next year.
The embattled Lalu, whose party suffered a virtual decimation in the 2010 Assembly polls and successive losses in two Assembly by-elections at Daraonda and Kalyanpur, looked desperate to register a victory in Maharajganj.
Nitish, too, looked eager to maintain his “winning spree”. Almost all the JD(U) and the BJP ministers toiled intensively for several days in the run-up to the election.
Nitish himself camped in the constituency for three consecutive days.
