In a major embarrassment for the recently formed “Mahagathbandhan” government, the JD(U) on Thursday ended up conceding the Kurhani assembly seat to the BJP with which the party’s supremo Nitish Kumar snapped ties four months ago.
JD(U) candidate Manoj Singh Kushwaha polled 73,008 votes, while BJP's Kedar Prasad Gupta got 76,653 to wrest the seat from the ruling "Mahagathbandhan" which prides itself as a symbol of what smaller, but united parties could achieve in the face of the saffron party's near hegemony.
The by-election was necessitated by the disqualification of Anil Kumar Sahani, an RJD MLA, whose party gave up its claim on the seat and backed its new ally which was pitted against a former alliance partner.
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"The victory is an affirmation of the people's faith in the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a resounding slap in the face of Mahagathbandhan which came to power by fraud and continues to cheat the masses", said Samrat Chaudhary, senior BJP leader and former minister, as he joined the jubilations outside the counting centre in Muzaffarpur.
Former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi also came out with a video statement taunting the ruling coalition for having made "even RJD president Lalu Prasad's kidney transplant an emotive issue".
He also challenged Nitish Kumar, his former boss, to "take moral responsibility for the defeat and resign, just like he did in 2014 when the JD(U) was drubbed in the Lok Sabha polls".
JD(U) president Upendra Kushwaha, who was one of the principal campaigners of his party, sought to take the defeat on the chin and display sportsmanship.
"We need to learn a lot from the loss in Kurhani. The first lesson is, we must follow the people and their will and not expect the other way round", Kushwaha tweeted, rather cryptically, while sharing a famous Hindi poem that inspires readers to achieve equanimity in the midst of ups and downs.