Bihar surprise: 1 seat for Mayawati's BSP with narrowest of margins

Mayawati

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) scored a rare electoral win in Bihar on Friday, with its candidate Satish Kumar Yadav narrowly defeating BJP’s sitting MLA Ashok Kumar Singh in the Ramgarh constituency by a razor-thin margin of 30 votes.

Yadav secured 72,689 votes, marking a significant breakthrough for the party, which has struggled to gain traction outside Uttar Pradesh in the recent years. The BSP last governed UP between 2007 and 2012 and failed to win a single seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Its victory in Bihar is its first notable success in the state in a long time.

Ramgarh, a seat known for frequent political swings since 2005, has alternated between Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the BJP. It had chosen the RJD’s Sudhakar Singh in 2020 and subsequently handed a bypoll win to BJP’s Ashok Kumar Singh four years later, making this close contest even more dramatic.

The BSP’s win came on a day of major political upheaval for Bihar. In a setback for the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan, the Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as the single largest party in the state assembly for the first time, capturing 89 seats. The sweep helped the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) sail to a commanding victory.

The NDA secured a total of 202 seats, with strong showings by its partners, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) tallying 85 seats, and Union minister Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) picking up 19 seats.

Despite the overall dominance displayed by the alliance, several individual contests went down to the wire, with Ramgarh delivering one of the tightest finishes of the day.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed BJP workers at the party headquarters on Friday evening after NDA's big win in Bihar. He also took a dig at the congress and RJD and thanked people of Bihar for opting for 'Viksit Bharat'.