New Delhi: Amid tight security, polling began for the Assembly by-elections in Bihar’s Bankipur, Madhya Pradesh’s Datia and Gujarat’s Manjalpur constituencies on Thursday, with elaborate arrangements in place to ensure free, fair and peaceful voting.
Officials said Polling for the Bankipur assembly by-election in Bihar began at 7 AM. Around 3.80 lakh voters are eligible to exercise their franchise to decide the fate of 26 candidates, including Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor, who is making his electoral debut.
Voting will continue till 6 PM, a senior official at the office of the state Chief Electoral Officer said. Counting of votes is scheduled for August 3. The entry of Kishor, a former poll strategist who launched the Jan Suraaj Party a few years ago, has turned the contest into a keenly watched battle in a constituency that has remained a BJP stronghold.
Bharatiya Janata Party national president Nitin Nabin vacated the seat after he was elected to the Rajya Sabha in April. Nabin had won the assembly seat for the fifth consecutive time in November last year, defeating his nearest rival Rekha Gupta of the RJD by over 50,000 votes.
The BJP, which has fielded youth wing leader Neeraj Kumar Sinha, has not lost the seat since 1995, when the constituency was known as Patna West. According to Election Commission data, all 422 polling booths in the constituency are located in urban areas.
Meanwhile, hours before voting began, Kishor accused the Bihar Police of having picked up many of his supporters, allegedly at the behest of the ruling BJP, which he said “fears losing the bypoll” in the Bankipur seat.
Speaking to reporters outside the state capital’s Jakkanpur police station, Kishor said, “I have been camping here for the past few hours, and the police is unable to divulge whereabouts of more than 16 of my supporters who have been rounded up.”
“I am not describing these as arrests since there is no record of which of my people have been named in which case. I came to this police station after learning that they had been kept at the Jakkanpur police station. But, here I am told that they have all been taken to different police stations. The SHO here even claims that the police station was not involved in the detentions, which were carried out at the instance of higher-ups,” the former poll strategist alleged.
Police officials were, however, not immediately available for comments on Kishor’s allegations. The Jan Suraaj Party founder claimed that “clearly, the ruling BJP is behind these detentions”.
“It knows it is going to lose the bypoll. The police can keep a person in custody for 24 hours without producing him before a magistrate. So a plan has been devised to keep some of my supporters in custody till the time voting is over,” he claimed.
He said this “misuse of administrative machinery, however, cannot ensure the victory of the ruling NDA, which roped in “almost all 201 of its MLAs” for the campaign.
“Realising that the ground was slipping from under its feet, the BJP even got a fake video of JD(U) president Nitish Kumar in which the longest serving chief minister of Bihar was shown as seeking votes for its candidate,” Kishor alleged.
Although 26 candidates are in the fray in Bankipur, the contest is being seen as primarily between Kishor and BJP’s Neeraj Kumar Sinha, a youth wing leader.
The Jan Suraaj Party leader added, “I am sitting at the police station to highlight the sheer lack of professionalism on the part of the police. The SHO here has tried to intimidate us and threatened to book one of my party colleagues under the draconian prohibition law. Once we are through with the bypoll, we will definitely press for action against the erring police officials.”
In Madhya Pradesh’s Datia assembly segment, the BJP has fielded Ashutosh Tiwari, contesting his first assembly election, while the Congress has once again nominated veteran leader Kunwar Ghanshyam Singh, who is contesting from the seat for the seventh time.
The Datia seat became vacant after Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti was disqualified following his conviction in a bank scam case.
Meanwhile, polling is also underway in Gujarat’s Manjalpur constituency, where the by-election was necessitated following the death of senior BJP MLA Yogesh Patel. The BJP has fielded Satish Patel, while the Congress has nominated former minister Bhikhabhai Rabari for the seat. The contest is a direct fight between the two parties.
