By Alok Mohit
PATNA: Kurhani in north Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district witnessed 57.9% voters turnout in the assembly byelection on Monday.
Officials said 57.9% of 3.11 lakh voters in the constituency had exercised their franchise till the end of polling hours. “Polling passed off peacefully, including at 43 booths, which had been identified as sensitive. No untoward incident has been reported,” the official said.
Altogether 13 candidates are in the fray in a four-cornered contest among ruling Mahagathbandhan -backed Janata Dal (United) candidate Manoj Kushwaha, BJP’s Kedar Prasad Gupta, Neelabh Kumar of Vikassheel Insaan Party’s (VIP) and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s (AIMIM) Mohammed Ghulam Murtaza.
Gupta had lost the 2020 assembly polls to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Anil Kumar Sahani by a slender margin of about 700 votes.
Stakes are high for the JD(U) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the byelection as both parties are pitted in a direct contest for the first time since the JD(U) snapped ties with BJP in August this year to form the ‘mahagathbandhan government’ with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and other parties.
The byelection in Kurhani was necessitated following disqualification of Sahani from the Bihar assembly after a Delhi court awarded him three-year jail term in the LTC scam case.
A court at Rouse Avenue in New Delhi had convicted Sahani, who represented Kurhani assembly seat, and two others on August 29 and sentenced them to three-year imprisonment two days later after holding them guilty of attempting to avail travel allowance in 2012 using forged Air India e-tickets without having undertaken the journeys.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which probed the case, alleged in the chargesheet, filed in 2015, that Sahni, then Janata Dal (United) member of Rajya Sabha, and others had submitted claims of Rs 23.71 lakh.
The counting of votes in Kurhani will be taken up on Thursday.
