NDA still in lead, Mahagathbandhan closes gap in Bihar

In a major turnaround since early morning leads, the RJD has slowly crawled ahead of the BJP, becoming the single-largest party. While BJP is leading in 72 seats, RJD is now leading in 75 – making them the single-largest party at 7 pm.

Counting of votes is underway amid strict COVID-19 measures across 243 assembly constituencies to decide the fate of the Nitish Kumar government which has governed the state for 15 years.

The Election Commission has said that by 5.30 pm, 2.7 crore votes had been counted out of total 4.11 crore EVM votes. While it did not have the exact count on postal ballots, it said that at least 1.6 lakh postal ballots had been sent out to service voters. All those that had been returned till 8 am Tuesday will be included in the counting. In addition there were 50,000 expected absentee ballots from PWD pe必利勁
rsonnel and those suffering from COVID-19 or under quarantine. There were also an unknown number of poll officials who were allowed to cast there votes separately because they were on election duty during polling.

According to the Bihar State Election Commission, three counting centres each in East Champaran, Siwan, Begusarai and Gaya, and two each in Nalanda, Banka, Purnia, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga, Gopalganj and Saharsa have been set up.