Bihar polls: Modi-Nitish super show, Rahul-Tejaswi flop show!

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept the Bihar assembly count on Friday, with early trends showing the bloc comfortably crossing the 200-mark and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) poised to be the single-largest party —a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the opposition

- BY S VENKAT NARAYAN OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Mahagathbandhan led by Tejashwi Yadav and Rahul Gandhi.

TV screens broadcasting the results screamed: Modi-Nitish super show, Rahul-Tejaswi flop show!

The reference is to the remarkable success of the NDA, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Rahul-Tejaswi team refers to Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD’s) chief ministerial aspirant Tejaswi Yadav and senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul is being projected as the Congress Party’s Prime Ministerial candidate if the Congress-led INDI Alliance ever gets a majority in a Lok Sabha election. He became Congress President on 16 December 2017. Since then, the party has failed to put up a decent show in two Lok Sabha elections and failed to do well in 11 State Assembly elections.

At 2pm on Friday, the seat-lead figures in the Bihar assembly count compiled from Election Commission live updates and major media live trackers as follows:

NDA (total leads): 200-201 seats (comfortable majority out of 243).

BJP (leads): 91 seats.

JDU (leads): 79-80 seats.

JP-RV (Leads): 22 seats; HAM leads: 5 seats.

Mahagathbandhan / INDIA bloc (total leads): 36 seats (RJD leading in 27 seats; Congress in 4; CPI(ML) in 4; others 1.

Notable constituency update at 2pm: Raghopur Mahaghatbandhan's chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav was reported trailing BJP's Satish Kumar by 3,000 to 3,200 votes.