Bihar Election Results: RJD Accuses Nitish Kumar Govt of Delaying Counting of Votes on 10 Seats

Bihar Election Results Latest News: Even as the Election Commission said the counting of votes for the Bihar assembly elections will take longer than usual and continue till late in the night, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Tuesday accused Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy, Sushil Kumar Modi, of pressurizing district and election officials to ensure verdicts in closely-contested seats are declared in favour of the ruling JDU-BJP alliance.

Taking to Twitter, the RJD in Hindi said officials had delayed handing certificates to winning candidates from at least 10 seats. The tweet from the RJD came as the counting of votes crossed the 12-hour mark.

“The Nitish Kumar administration is delaying counting in 10 seats. The candidates who have won have not been given certificates. Sitting in the Chief Minister’s house, Nitish Kumar and Sushil Kumar are making the Chief Secretary exert pressure on officials from seats where the margin is close,” the party said in its statement.

Even after 12 hours of vote counting, the results of the Bihar Assembly election – the first major polling exercise to be held amid the Covid pandemic – are still unclear.

The EC said the counting of votes for the Bihar assembly elections will take longer than usual and continue till late in the night because of 63 per cent increase in the number of EVMs.

EC officials said over 1 crore votes were counted till around 1.30 PM out of nearly 4.16 crore votes polled in the three-phase elections. Out of nearly 7.3 crore voters, 57.09 per cent had cast votes in the polls.

This time, the EC has restricted the number of voters per polling station to 1,000 from 1,500 to maintain physical distancing, thus increasing the number of polling stations.

Bhushan said the number of rounds for counting varies between 19 and 51 in different constituencies. The average come to approximately 35 rounds.

As per latest updates from the EC at 8.21 PM, the NDA was ahead on 125 seats and the opposition alliance in 111. The 243-member Bihar Assembly has a majority mark of 122.