Bihar polls: BSP wins one seat, scrapes through by 30 votes

The Mayawati-led party had contested 192 of the 243 seats in the state Assembly.

Satish Yadav got 72,689 votes, Ashok Kumar got 72,659. Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Ajit Kumar and Jan Suraaj Party’s Anand Kumar Singh finished third and fourth with 41,480 and 4,426 votes. Also, 1,154 votes were polled to NOTA (None of the Above) from the seat.

Ramgarh is traditionally considered an RJD bastion.

Satish Yadav had contested the Ramgarh bypoll last year on BSP symbol but lost by a margin of 1,362 votes to Ashok Kumar Singh.

In the 2020 Assembly elections, Satish’s uncle Ambika Singh had contested as BSP nominee and finished as runner-up against RJD’s Sudhakar Singh by only 189 votes.

BSP’s Bihar in-charge Anil Kumar said that Satish, a teacher, and his uncle had lost the election from the seat in the past by narrow margins.

Chaudhary attributed “unexpected rise” in voter turnout to BSP’s defeat from other seats.

The party got 1.62 per cent vote share in the state elections.

In the 2020 Bihar elections, the party had won one of the 78 seats it contested. Mohd Zama Khan, who was elected from Chainpur, later joined the JDU and became a minister in the Nitish Kumar Cabinet.