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Bihar assembly election 2020: BJP stronghold Purnia to witness direct face-off with Congress
Sitting BJP MLA from Purnia Vijay Kumar Khemka will be up against Indu Sinha of the Congress, whom he defeated in the 2015 assembly polls as well. Purnia has been a BJP-held seat since 2000.
Purnia assembly constituency, in Bihar’s Purnia district, is among 78 assembly constituencies which will go to polls in the third and final phase of the ongoing Bihar assembly elections, on November 7.
This assembly seat comes under a parliamentary constituency with which it also shares its name. A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold since 2000, Purnia’s incumbent MLA is BJP’s Vijay Kumar Khemka while the Lok Sabha MP from the parliamentary constituency is Santosh Kumar Kushwaha of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal(United), an ally of the BJP.
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In the 2015 assembly polls, Khemka emerged victorious over Congress’ Indu Sinha by 32,815 votes. A total of 186,911 voters cast their votes from this constituency out of 283,483 eligible to vote. Of these, Khemka won 92,020 or 49.26% votes, while Sinha secured 59,205 or 31.70% votes.
For the ongoing elections, Khemka and Sinha are once again in contention as they have been fielded by their respective parties yet again. This time, a total of 312,508 people from this constituency are eligible to vote. The break-up of eligible voters is as follows: 163,158 males, 149,341 females and nine from the third gender.
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The three-phase Bihar assembly polls commenced on October 28, while second phase polling took place on November 3. Bihar has a total of 243 assembly constituencies; 71 went to polls in the first phase and 94 in the second.
Counting of votes and result declaration is scheduled to take place on November 10.
