All eyes will be on four Union ministers, who are facing tough battles to retain their parliamentary constituencies in Bihar, as the Lok Sabha election enters its seventh and final phase on May 19.
A total of 15,252,608 voters will decide the fates of 157 candidates, including ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Ram Kripal Yadav, Ashwani Choubey and RK Singh, in Patna Sahib, Pataliputra, Arrah, Buxar, Nalanda, Sasaram, Karakat and Jahanabad on May 19.
Nobody is talking of issues facing the people and Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains the dominating factor so much so that ally and chief minister Nitish Kumar has talked about him and the central government’s achievements in all the election rallies. Nitish Kumar had severed a long-standing partnership with the BJP ahead of 2014 polls, protesting Modi’s nomination as the prime ministerial candidate.
Read: Full coverage of Lok Sabha elections 2019
These seats are crucial for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as it had won all of them in the last general election in 2014. The RJD, based on its performance in the 2015 assembly elections when it won 18 out of 48 assembly constituencies falling within these eight Lok Sabha seats with the help of its allies, is expecting to stop the BJP’s juggernaut.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal(United), combined together, won 26 seats.
{{/usCountry}}The Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal(United), combined together, won 26 seats.
{{/usCountry}}Prasad, the Union law minister, is contesting from the Patna Sahib parliamentary constituency and is pitted against former BJP leader and sitting member of Parliament Shatrughan Sinha, who is contesting on Congress ticket. Patna Sahib has been a BJP stronghold for more than two decades, with Shatrughan Sinha, representing the seat twice from 2009.
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Incidentally, Prasad will be contesting a Lok Sabha election for the first time. He has been a BJP Rajya Sabha MP since 2012.
The contest on Patna Sahib has turned into a prestige battle between the BJP, on one side, and Sinha on the other. The BJP is leaving no stone unturned for Prasad’s victory. The BJP’s president Amit Shah held a road show in his support on May 11 while chances are that Congress president Rahul Gandhi will also hold a similar show in Sinha’s favour.
The Patliputra parliamentary constituency will see a battle royal between Union minister of state Ram Kripal Yadav and RJD leader Lalu Prasad’s eldest daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti. Yadav had quit the Rashtriya Janata Dal and joined the BJP in 2014 after being denied a ticket by Lalu Prasad in favour of his daughter.
Read: ‘Lantern vs arrow’, Lalu Yadav writes letter to Nitish Kumar
Another minister, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, is contesting from the Buxar Lok Sabha seat which he won in the 2014 general elections. He is pitted against the RJD’s Jagadanand Singh. Bureaucrat-turned-politician RK Singh is in the fray from the Arrah parliamentary constituency, considered a Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) stronghold.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s popularity will be once again tested in his home district Nalanda, which the JD(U) had been winning since 2009. JD(U) leader Kaushalendra Kumar is the current lawmaker from the Nalanda Lok Sabha seat and is facing Ashok Kumar Azad Chandervanshi of the Vikassheel Insan Party (VIP).
RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha, who walked out of NDA at the fag end of NDA’s regime, is facing rough weather from Karakat, a constituency he got elected from in 2014.
Former speaker Meira Kumar, daughter of late Jagjivan Ram, is also seeking election from Sasaram, a seat which she lost in 2014.
The votes will be counted on May 23.