E-Paper
Bihar election 2020: Battle of fresh faces in Sultanganj
JD(U) leader Subodh Rai won the last Bihar Assembly election from Sultanganj, defeating Himanshu Prasad of Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) by 14,033 votes.
The high-stakes Bihar Assembly elections will begin on October 28, when the voting will take place in the first phase. The three-phase election will conclude on November 7 and the results will be announced on November 10.
Sultanganj is one of the 71 constituencies where voting will take place in the first phase.
Located in Bhagalpur district, Sultanganj comes under the Banka Lok Sabha constituency. The ruling Janata Dal (United) had wrested the seat from Congress and its candidates have been winning from the Sultanganj constituency since 2005.
Full Coverage: Bihar Assembly Election 2020
The Sultanganj assembly segment consists of Shahkund and Sultanganj community development blocks.
What happened in 2015?
JD(U) leader Subodh Rai won the last election, defeating Himanshu Prasad of Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) by 14,033 votes. While Rai secured 63,345 votes in the 2015 Assembly elections (and close to 41 per cent vote share), Prasad got 49,312 votes (31.87 per cent vote share).
For this year’s state elections, all the three major parties - the JD(U), Congress and LJP - have fielded fresh faces in Sultanganj.
While Congress’ Lalan Kumar is the grand alliance’s candidate from here, physics professor Lalit Kumar Mandal has got the JD(U) ticket to be National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate from Sultanganj. Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) has fielded Nilam Devi from here.
The BJP is fighting these elections along with the Janata Dal (United); the Congress has joined Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and three other Left parties to form Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) to challenge the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
According to the 2011 census, Sultanganj constituency has a population of 4,36,079 and 87.87 per cent of it is rural. The percentage of Scheduled castes (SC) and Scheduled tribes (ST) is 12.97 and 0.02 respectively.
According to the voter list, there are 3,27,353 voters in the constituency. Out of these, 1,73,824 are males and 1,53,909 are females.
The voter turnout in the 2015 Assembly election was 50.06 per cent.
The Congress has won the election from Sultanganj seven times since 1952, but the seat is now held by the JD(U) which plans to maintain its dominance from here.
