Kusum Devi managed to receive 70,053 votes after the completion of all 24 rounds of counting, while the RJD candidate secured 68259 votes.
Assembly bypoll: BJP wins Gopalganj Assembly seat in Bihar (Photo: ANI)
After an intense poll battle in the Gopalganj Assembly seat in Bihar, BJP’s candidate Kusum Devi won against RJD’s Mohan Prasad Gupta with a margin of nearly 2,000 votes.
The win of BJP is a huge setback for the RJD and the “Mahagathbandhan” comprising seven parties . Kusum Devi managed to receive 70,053 votes after the completion of all 24 rounds of counting, while the RJD candidate secured 68259 votes.
After winning the election, Kusum Devi expressed her gratitude for the voters and said, “The entire Gopalganj district is with me. Victory for everyone is my victory. I will carry forward the development work that did not get completed. I was blessed by everyone.”
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The battle between the two candidates was neck to neck till the last round and finally the BJP candidate succeeded. The role of BSP candidate Indira Yadav, who is wife of Sadhu Yadav and AIMIM candidate Abdul Salam, cannot be ruled out in the victory of BJP, say analysts.
Indira Yadav got 8,853 and Abdul Salam managed to get 12,212 votes. These two have turned out to be the “Vote Katwa (divider of votes)” for the RJD candidate in this close contest. The RJD’s vote bank comprises Muslims and Yadavs (MY) and these two candidates bagged over 21,000 votes.
However, if we compare the situation to the Mokama bypoll, there was no ‘vote katwa’ candidate there and hence was a direct contest between RJD’s Neelam Devi and BJP’s Sonam Devi and the former won the contest with a margin of around 16,000 votes.
In Mokama, Neelam Devi bagged 79,744 votes while BJP candidate Sonam Devi got only 63,003 votes. The margin of defeat for her was 16,741 votes. BSP and AIMIM did not contest in Mokama. Upendra Sahani of Rashtriya Jansambhawana Party got 1,709 votes, Deeraj Malakar (Independent 529 votes, Lalu Prasad Yadav (Independent) 644 votes, Sunil Kumar (Independent) 1,133 votes and NOTA 2,470 votes in Mokama.
(With Inputs From Agencies)
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