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‘Preferred’ as CM, majority of votes, but no power: Tejashwi Yadav's tragic tale
Tejashwi Yadav's Raghopur win came on a day when the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its Mahagathbandhan alliance suffered a major setback in the Bihar elections
Tejashwi Yadav, RJD leader and INDIA bloc's chief ministerial face, on Friday managed to retain Bihar's Raghopur assembly seat after a seesaw contest, defeating BJP's Satish Kumar by 14,532 votes, according to the Election Commission.
Tejashwi Yadav polled 1,18,597 votes, while Kumar bagged 1,04,065 votes. Independent candidate Baliram Singh finished third with 3,086 votes.
Tejashwi has now held the Raghopur seat for a decade, having defeated Satish Kumar in the 2015, 2020, and now 2025 assembly elections.
However, the victory in Raghopur came on a day when the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its Mahagathbandhan alliance suffered a major setback in the Bihar assembly polls. Contesting 143 seats under the seat-sharing arrangement, the RJD managed to win just 25 seats, marking one of its weakest performances in recent elections.
The NDA alliance claimed the state winning 202 seats in the 243-member assembly.
Track live updates on Bihar election results here
Earlier in the day, before the poll body began counting votes, Tejashwi had exuded confidence, saying that the Mahagathbandhan would win the elections. "Thanks to everyone. A change is about to come. We are forming the government," he told reporters.
The EC trends suggest that Tejashwi might miss out on a hat-trick in the Raghopur seat, probably losing the constituency to BJP's Satish Kumar Yadav. But the RJD leader made a comeback in the second half and won the seat emphatically.
RJD gets maximum vote share
While NDA alliance won the elections, the maximum votes were polled in favour of the RJD. Tejashwi Yadav's party registered the highest vote share among all parties in these elections, securing 23 per cent, according to data on the Election Commission of India website.
RJD's vote share was 2.92 per cent higher than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and 3.75 per cent more than chief minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United (JDU).
Also read - Tejashwi's RJD gets the votes, BJP and Nitish the seats: Bihar election results decoded
Tejashwi preferred CM but has no votes?
As pollsters released their exit poll projections following the conclusion of the second and final phase of the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, Peoples Pulse and Axis My India also rolled out the results of their 'preferred CM' survey.
To people's surprise, while the seat-share projections forecast a clear win for the NDA, Tejashwi Yadav emerged as the most popular choice for the chief minister of Bihar.
According to Axis My India, Tejashwi had a preference rate of 34 per cent, while Nitish Kumar was preferred by only 22 per cent. Peoples Pulse projected that Tejashwi was the preferred CM for 32 per cent of people, while Nitish Kumar had a popularity of 30 per cent.
Bihar elections 2025
The 243-member Bihar assembly went to polls in two phases, on November 6 and 11. A voter turnout of 65.08 per cent was recorded in the first phase, while the second phase saw 68.76 per cent voter turnout.
The overall voter turnout, 66.91 per cent, was termed a “historic high” rate for Bihar by the Election Commission of India.
