New Delhi: Rashtriya Janata Dal candidate from Patliputra seat Misa Bharti has defeated Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ram Kripal Yadav by a margin of more than 76,000 votes.
This is the third round of electoral battle between Bharti and Ram Kripal, a former confidant of her father Lalu Yadav till 2014 when he was elected on a BJP ticket in the 2014 elections after quitting the RJD.
Ram Kripal, once known as a close aide of Lalu’s, had quit the party right after Lalu had decided to field his eldest daughter from Patliputra in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
Before the election, Ram Kripal had expressed confidence about his prospects from Patliputra because of his round-the-clock availability and accessibility to the public while highlighting Bharti’s time away from the constituency and in the upper house of Parliament since her election in 2021.
Bharti’s win has come as a shot in the arm for RJD and especially Lalu Yadav and his family which ran a spirited campaign on the line that a returning BJP might change the Constitution, which would take away reservation from the backwards. However, RJD didn’t manage to get over the line on most of the seats they contested.
Patliputra went to the polls in the last phase of the seven election phases.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi increased the pitch of the battle by declaring that Tejashwi Yadav, who has been campaigning aggressively throughout the state for the Grand Alliance, could well go to jail for his role in the alleged land-for-jobs scam in which he, along with his sisters and parents have been charge-sheeted by central agencies.
Like the Saran constituency, Patliputra too saw violence on the day of voting on 1 June when Ram Kripal’s convoy was attacked in the constituency. Some members of his convoy got injured, and police booked nine people on Kripal’s complaint.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)