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Bihar election results: Left parties leading in 18 of 29 seats, say trends on expected lines
Bihar Assembly election: According to Left leaders, while the alliance with RJD and Congress has helped in vote conversion, what has also led to the good performance is the cadre base of the three parties that helped spread the reach of the grand alliance.
The Left parties, which fought the Bihar Assembly election with Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as part of the grand alliance, are leading in 18 of the 29 seats they contested.
As per the seat-sharing agreement between the grand alliance constituents for Bihar Assembly election, the CPI(M) was given four seats, the CPI got six and the CPI-ML (Liberation) 19.
These included some seats the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) had won in the 2015 Assembly polls.
According to Election Commission of India (ECI) website, the CPI(M) and the CPI were leading in three seats each while the CPI-ML (Liberation) was leading in 12 at 2:55 pm.
In 2010, only the CPI had managed to win a seat in Bihar while in 2015, the CPI-ML (Liberation) grabbed three seats as the other two Left parties drew a blank.
“The leads so far are on the expected lines and we hope to catch up in three more seats. This was a different kind of election. This was more a people’s movement. We banked on young candidates, student leaders, candidates who were part of farmer struggles, working class people. That seems to have worked,” Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, said.
According to Left leaders, while the alliance with the two parties has helped in vote conversion, what has also led to the good performance is the cadre base of the three parties that helped spread the reach of the grand alliance.
The trends for all the 243 seats are out on the Election Commission website. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which has Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United) as its constituents, is leading in 128 seats. The BJP is emerging as the senior partner this time, as it is leading on 74 of the 110 seats it contested and JD(U) on 47 of the 115 seats it contested.
The other NDA constituents - Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) (HAM) - are leading on six and one seat, respectively.
The counting of votes polled in Bihar Assembly elections will continue till late evening on Tuesday, said Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar, HR Srinivasa.
