The Purnea Assembly bypoll in Bihar, held peacefully on Saturday with a mere 44 per cent polling amid rains, is far from being even an electoral semi-final in the state to allow an early prediction of the faraway final’s outcome in 2015. But recent important developments have given this bypoll an outsized aura.
Necessitated by the shocking murder of Purnea’s sitting four-term BJP legislator Raj Kishore Kesri by a woman teacher in January, the bypoll has turned almost into an acid test for Bihar’s ruling NDA, now struggling to retain its shining image under chief minister Nitish Kumar’s leadership. The bypoll’s outcome will also decide the direction of the steadily rising morale of Bihar’s disarrayed Opposition parties in taking on the ruling JD(U)-BJP alliance.
While seven candidates vied for the votes of 2.21 lakh eligible voters in this constituency in eastern Bihar, the main contest appears on the surface to have been between the BJP’s Kiran Keshri, widow of the slain BJP legislator, and the CPI(M)’s Amit Sarkar, son of slain CPI(M) MLA Ajit Sarkar, who was killed in 1998. Congress candidate Ram Charitra Yadav is also said to have put up a good fight by extensive campaigning.
With CM Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, among other senior NDA leaders, having campaigned for the political novice Kiran Keshri, she has the extra advantage on top of the likely sympathy votes.