Patna: On the surface nothing appears to have changed after the results were announced for the byelections to three seats in Bihar.

The RJD retained Araria Lok Sabha constituency and the Jehanabad Assembly seat; the BJP held on to the Bhabhua Assembly segment.

But a deeper look at the results shows that they are not just about compassionate votes as chief minister Nitish Kumar has said.

The results have robbed the NDA of its "invincibility tag" and placed young Tejashwi Prasad Yadav as a leader in his own right and also proved that Lalu Prasad, who is in jail in Ranchi since December last year, still remains an electoral force.

BJP leaders had been confident of wresting the Araria Lok Sabha seat from the RJD. In 2014, Araria eluded them as the RJD's Mohammed Taslimuddin defeated the sitting MP Pradeep Kumar Singh, who contested this time as well. But in 2014, the combined vote of the JDU and BJP - the two fought separately then - was about 75,000 more than what Taslimuddin got.

"The combination of votes did not happen this time and it appears that a section of EBCs and Dalits voted for the RJD," conceded a frustrated BJP leader. RJD's Sarfaraz Alam, the son of the late Taslimuddin, won by over 61,000 votes.

The only consolation for the BJP was that its candidate Rinki Rani Pandey won the Bhabhua Assembly seat by over 15,000 votes defeating Shambhu Singh Patel of the Congress.

The defeat in Jehanabad for the JDU is bitter. Nitish had himself addressed two public meetings there. Still the RJD's Udai Yadav bettered the victory margin of his late father Mundrika Singh Yadav, who had won in 2015 by around 30,000 votes. Udai won by over 35,000 votes against the JDU's Abhiram Sharma, handpicked by Nitish to contest.