Lok Sabha elections 2019: Bihar votes for 4 seats in Phase 1; BJP-JDU alliance, Congress-RJD alliance battle it out

In Bihar, 4 Lok Sabha constituencies -- Aurangabad, Gaya, Nawada, and Jamui - will go to polls for deciding the fate of 44 candidates today. For the Phase 1, the Election Commission has set up 7,486 polling stations for smooth conduct of elections.

In the first phase, 74,40,324 voters are eligible to vote, out of which, 38,94,024 are males, 35,46,001 are females and 299 voters are in Third Gender category. As per the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) H R Srinivasan, "The decision to carry out elections in seven phases has been made keeping in mind availability and movement of security forces." He also added that a total of 7.06 crore voters will exercise their franchise on 72,723 polling stations.

Main sides battling against each other are BJP-JDU alliance, Congress-RJD alliance. The opposition 'Mahagathbandhan', also termed as Grand Alliance had announced its seat-sharing formula for the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state, under which the RJD will contest 20 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats and the Congress 9 while RLSP will put up candidates in 5 seats, HAM and VIP in 3 each, as per the agreement. RJD will give one seat out of its quota to the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML).

For the first time, chief minister Nitish Kumar, who heads the Janata Dal (United) in the state, is campaigning for Modi since the current coalition government of JD(U) has BJP as its key ally. Kumar's party had teamed up with the BJP after quitting the Grand Alliance.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections , the NDA had won 31 seats with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning 22 seats, followed by Lok Janshakti Party which won 6 seats and 3 seats won by Rashtriya Lok Samta Party.

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