NDA manages only one seat in Bihar

The JD(U), however, retained Khagaria with its nominee Renu Singh beating Naina Rana of RJD by about 38,000 votes.

Abdul Hamid of Congress retained the Dhubri seat in Assam beating his nearest BJP rival Bimal Jaiswal by over 21,000 votes and NCP wrested the Outer Manipur seat from Congress when its nominee Holkhomang Haokip, a former minister, defeated the Congress rival R K Theko by 36,000votes. Polling for the four Bihar seats was deferred owing to floods and that for Dhubri because of killing of the BJP nominee and the current candidate’s father by ULFA militants. Repoll was held simultaneously in 176 polling booths of Outer Manipur.

In Bihar, the BJP-JD(U) combine suffered humiliation within a month of handing out a crushing defeat to the RJD-Congress alliance. The defeat of the combine is all the more severe as all the four seats were held by it in the last Lok Sabha. The Left parties opened their account in the State with the CPI-M winning the Bhagalpur seat with support from the ruling RJD. RJD president Laloo Prasad Yadav said results of the four Bihar seats showed people’s indignation against a fortnight-old "communal" dispensation at the Centre.

"The results have proved beyond doubt that RJD’s mass support is intact," he said.

Yadav said he campaigned for his party’s allies, Congress and CPI-M, in Rajmahal and Bhagalpur and unseated BJP nominees. Congress on the other hand,disputed the claim of RJD president that the victory of party nominee Thomas Hansda in Rajmahal was victory of RJD-Congress combine saying it was “purely a success of Congress.” “Laloo even didn’t campaign for Thomas in Rajmahal…It is purely our victory…No one can take credit for this,” Congress legislature party leader Ramashray Prasad Singh told PTI.

Singh said his party was irrevocably committed to creating a separate Jharkhand state out of Bihar “and our stand has immensely benefitted us.”