A clearer picture on who will form the next government in Bihar was expected only late on Tuesday, as results for just 37 of the 243 seats in the State Assembly were available till 7.45 pm.
Briefing newspersons here, Election Commission officials said that up till 5.30 pm, 2.47 crore of the 4.11 crore votes had been counted. Officials said that all the results could come in “early or late tonight (Tuesday night)”
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 14 seats and was leading in 58 seats, while its election ally Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) won six seats and was leading in 35 Assembly Constituencies, the Election Commission website showed at 7.45 pm on Tuesday.
A single party or alliance must win 122 seats to form the next government in the State. The BJP has allied with the JD (U) while the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) tied up with the Congress and some Left Parties.
The RJD won nine seats and was leading in 67 seats. Congress won two seats and was leading in 18 seats.
In terms of vote share, the RJD cornered 23.4 per cent of the votes polled, the BJP 19.4 per cent and others 19 per cent at 7.30 pm, according to the EC website.
EC officials said it would be wrong to say that the counting process was progressing slowly. “The lowest number of rounds of votes to be counted in the State is 19 while the highest number of round of votes has to be counted in 51 Assembly Constituencies in the State. The approximate average is about 35 rounds of votes to be counted before the final result can be declared. It takes between 20-30 minutes to finish each round of counting,” the EC official said.
EC officials said there were 7,727 scheduled rounds of which 4,858 had been completed till 5.30 pm. Over half the counting work had been completed in 119 constituencies till 5.30 pm.
The margin of votes in at least 18 constituencies is less than 1,000, while in about 108 constituencies the margin is above 10,000, and it is more than 5,000 and less than 10,000 in about 67 constituencies.
Officials said that since the elections were being held during the Covid-19 pandemic, several new measures had been taken, including having 1.06 lakh polling stations as against 65,000 polling stations in the previous Assembly elections in 2015. “Besides this time to maintain social distancing norms each polling booth has only 1,000 voters as against 1,500 voters earlier. We have also halved the number of tables on which votes are being counted in all the counting rooms to seven,” officials said.