Patna, Dec. 4: The ruling Janata Dal (United) today retained north Bihar’s Laukaha Assembly seat by a resounding margin, demonstrating that Nitish Kumar’s roller coaster is racing merrily in the state. The victory is an icing on the cake, as it has come barely one-and-a-half months after the party trounced the same opponent in Doranda.

JD(U)’s Satish Kumar defeated his nearest rival, RJD’s Mukhtar Ansari by 22,963 votes. The BJP-backed JD(U) polled 64,625 votes against the LJP-backed RJD’s 41,662 votes. The Congress polled only 4,886 votes, trailing fourth — an indication that the ruling party at the Centre has done little to improve its standing in Bihar.

The bypoll was necessitated on the seat after the death of Laukaha MLA and JD(U) minister Hari Prasad Sah’s death in October this year. Satish Kumar is Sah’s son.

Though the margin of the RJD’s defeat at the hands of the JD(U) was bigger than that in the 2010 Assembly elections, the statistics also reveals that the embattled Lalu Prasad was still holding the political space of the main Opposition party on the ground level. The RJD’s vote share has gone up from 30,283 to 41,662.

But Nitish-led JD(U)’s vote share has risen more sharply with the party earning 64,625 votes against 47,849 in 2010. Explaining the phenomena, state JD(U) chief Basistha Narayan Singh said: “We have nothing to do with how the opponents are faring in the polls. What we know is our vote share is rising because the Nitish government is consistently working hard to better people’s life.”

RJD general secretary Ramkripal Yadav said: “We accept the defeat with humility. But the fact remains that our vote share swelled in Doranda as well as Laukaha. Our leader, Lalu Prasad, will go out to the people and keep on working hard to fill the gap.”

A close look at the results shows that despite his party’s drubbings in successive polls, the beleaguered RJD boss continues to maintain his hold over his caste men — the Yadavs — state’s single largest caste with about 15 per cent population, and to some extent the Muslims also. The Congress had fielded a Yadav candidate in Laukaha, but it failed to make inroads in Lalu’s vote bank. RJD’s Mukhtar Ansari fetched over 41,662 votes against Congress’s 4,886, indicating that the Muslims and the Yadavs (M-Y) have solidly voted for the RJD.

Still, Ansari’s defeat might be relatively more frustrating for the RJD boss for Laukaha was treated as a bastion of the M-Y combination and by fielding a Muslim nominee here, Lalu was hoping to revive his magic. “Mukhtar’s defeat is the last blow to Lalu’s M-Y strength. We have reports that a big section of Muslims also voted for the JD(U) nominee despite the latter being a non-Muslim,” Sanjay Jha, BJP MLC and a resident of the area, said.

Covering the gap between the vote shares of the JD(U)-led NDA and the RJD, as of now, appears to be an uphill task for Lalu. While Lalu is, apparently, clueless about how to expand his M-Y combination, Nitish has got EBCs (extremely backward castes), the Mahadalits (a bigger chunk of the Scheduled Castes) besides the upper castes who shifted from the Congress in 1990s and have been voting for the JD(U)-BJP.

Moreover, Nitish successfully cuts into a big section of Yadavs and Muslims also by fielding them in the M-Y dominated constituencies. It is evident that the JD(U) has far more number of Muslim and Yadav legislators than the RJD in the state.

In addition to the “social engineering” that the chief minister assiduously carried out during his previous tenure, he has initiated several ventures in the social sector like houses and pension, free schooling, uniform, medicine and even food grains to the deprived families.

By making a consistent foray among the people living on the periphery through his yatras (he is currently on seva yatra), the chiefr minister appears to maintain his grasp over his constituents, crippling Lalu’s operations in the hinterlands.

(With additional input from Jitendra Kumar Shrivastav in Darbhanga)