Bihar Assembly Election 2020: Congress, BJP headed for a close battle in Aurangabad

Aurangabad is among more than two dozen constituencies in eight districts that are considered vulnerable to Maoist violence.

Aurangabad is among the 71 constituencies, spread across 16 districts, which will go to polls on October 28 in the first phase of the Bihar assembly elections. The Congress’ Anand Shankar Singh won the seat in the 2015 Bihar assembly elections, defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Ramadhar Singh by 18,398 votes. Ramadhar Singh previously held the seat.

This year, the BJP has pitched its candidate to represent the NDA by fielding Ramadhar Singh from Aurangabad. At the same time, Anand Shankar Singh will fight the polls for the Congress and will represent the Grand Alliance. Chandresh Prasad Gupta from the Jan Adhikar Party Loktantrik, Anil Kumar from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Ashish Kumar Soni from the Rashtriya Seva Dal are in the fray in the Aurangabad constituency.

Aurangabad is among more than two dozen constituencies in eight districts that are considered vulnerable to Maoist violence. According to the state’s chief electoral officer HR Srinivasa, out of the 71 constituencies, 35 fall in Maoist-affected areas, which will restrict the standard polling exercise and will be carried out in a staggered manner.

During this year’s round of electioneering in Aurangabad, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav was attacked with slippers while he was campaigning for his party’s candidate in the constituency ahead of the Bihar assembly elections. The attack took place when Yadav was sitting on the stage and was about to speak. While one slipper missed him completely, the other one landed in his lap.

The Bihar assembly elections, seen as a mammoth exercise by political experts, will be the first in the country to be conducted by the Election Commission amid a raging coronavirus disease outbreak.

The Commission has introduced several guidelines keeping the viral contagion in consideration. People have been instructed to wear a mask during all election related activities and thermal screening of everyone involved in the election exercises will be carried out by the EC officials.

In a departure from the previous polling practices, only 1,000 voters will exercise their franchise at a particular booth, instead of 1,500 keeping the Covid-19 norms. The polling will be conducted from 7am to 6pm. There were 288,169 eligible voters in the constituency in 2015 – 155,686 men and 132,474 women.

In the three-phase Bihar election, which will be held on October 28, November 3 and November 7 for 243 seats, the opposition alliance of the RJD, Congress and the Left will take on the combine of the ruling JD(U), BJP, Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAMS and Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insan Party (VIP). Votes will be counted on November 10.