NDA sweeps Bihar elections with 202 seats, Mahagathbandhan reduced to 35

The National Democratic Alliance won the Bihar Assembly elections on Friday, bagging 202 of the 243 total seats, according to the Election Commission data.

The tally of the Opposition Mahagathbandhan was 35 seats.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) won 85 seats, almost doubling its tally of 43 seats from the 2020 polls.

The Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as the single largest in terms of seat share after winning 89 of the 101 constituencies it contested, while the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) won 19.

From the Opposition alliance, the Rashtriya Janata Dal won 25 seats, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation clinched two. The Congress won six seats.

A party or an alliance needs 122 seats in the 243-member Assembly to form the government.

The Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance, thanked voters for their “incredible and historic mandate”. It said that the result was not just an electoral victory, but was the “stamp of Bihar’s bright future”.

The first phase of polling took place on November 6 and the second on November 11. The provisional voter turnout was a record 67.1%. This was the highest polling percentage in Bihar since 1951, the Election Commission said.

The results are in line with exit polls, which had predicted a...

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