Winner with biggest marginin 2014 isn't in fray this time

Patna: It may be called the beauty or an irony of electoral politics that Janak Ram , who won the 2014 general elections with the biggest margin of 2,86,936 in Bihar, is not in the fray this time as his party has ceded the seat to its ally. Similarly, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who defeated his nearest rival by 2,65,805 votes in last election, is trying for a ticket from the opposition camp.

Interestingly, Patna Sahib constituency had the lowest voter turnout at 45.36% in 2014. Both Janak and Shatrughan were the BJP nominees and, no doubt, there was a Modi wave in their favour. Janak had defeated Jyoti Bharti of Congress from Gopalganj while Bhojpuri actor-turned-politician Kunal Singh of Congress had lost to Shatrughan in Patna Sahib.

Ram Vilas Paswan from Hajipur and Ajay Nishad from Muzaffarpur had also won the previous election by a margin of more than 2 lakh votes. Ram Vilas had defeated Congress’s Sanjeev Prasad Toni by a margin of 2,25,500 votes.

Given the size of each Lok Sabha constituency, there were many who had lost the last general elections by a margin of less than 10,000 votes.

Congress’s Ashok Kumar had lost to Ram Chandra Paswan of LJP from Samastipur by 6,872 votes only. Similarly, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain of BJP had lost to RJD’s Shailesh Kumar alias Bulo Mandal by 9,485 votes in Bhagalpur, which has gone to JD(U) quota this time. Kaushlendra Kumar of JD(U) had defeated LJP’s Satya Nand Sharma in Nalanda by 9,627 votes, while Putul Kumari of BJP had lost to RJD’s Jai Prakash Narayan Yadav from Banka by 10,144 votes.

The battle was also tough in Madhubani where BJP’s Hukumdeo Narayan Yadav defeated RJD’s Abdul Bari Siddiqui by 20,535 votes.