E-Paper
Bihar election 2020: Banka to witness triangular fight
Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ram Narayan Mandal won the Banka seat in 2015, defeating Zafrul Hoda of Rashtriya Janata Dal by a narrow margin of 3,730 votes.
Elections in Bihar are just days away. The voting in the first phase will take place on October 28, followed by November 3 and 7 in the second and third phase. The results will be declared on November 10.
Announcing the poll schedule for the 243-member Bihar assembly last month, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora has said voting will start at 7 am but the period will be extended by one hour until 6 pm, except in the Left Wing Extremism-affected areas, so that Covid-19 patients can vote in the last hour of the day.
Among the seats where voting will be held in the first phase is Banka. The district is situated at the far Southeast end of the state of Bihar. The eastern and the southern border of Banka borders Jharkhand’s Godda.
Full Coverage: Bihar Assembly Election 2020
In west and northeast, it is surrounded by Jamui and Munger districts. Bhagalpur is situated on the north side of Banka.
What happened in 2015?
Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Ram Narayan Mandal won the seat, defeating Zafrul Hoda of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) by a narrow margin of 3,730 votes.
Mandal secured 52,379 vote (38.36 per cent vote share) in 2015 as against 48,649 of Hoda (35.63 per cent).
This year, the BJP and Janata Dal (United) are fighting the elections together as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). While the NDA has again shown trust in Mandal, the RJD - which is part of Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) - has replaced Hoda with Javed Iqbal Ansari.
Though there is a direct fight between BJP and RJD, Rashtriya Lok Samta Party’s (RLSP) Kaushal Kumar Singh has made the fight triangular.
As per the 2011 census, Banka has a population of 3,66,489. Out of this, 87.45 per cent is rural and 12.55 per cent is urban. The Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) ratio is 11.26 and 2.01 per cent, respectively.
As per the voter list, there are 2,54,120 electorates in the constituency. Out of this, 1,34,091 are males and 1,200,29 are females.
