VOTE SHARE RJD 23.32  4.85 Cong 9.44  2.79 BJP 19.33 BIHAR  5.07 JD(U) 15.3 LJP 5.65  1.0  0.85 AIMIM 1.24 Nota 1.69  0.81 Others 24.02 WARANGAL  WEDNESDAY  NOVEMBER 11, 2020  `7.00  PAGES 14  CITY EDITION   Percentage change compared to 2015 elections Source: ECI (As of 9 pm Tuesday) That Nitish Kumar will be the CM has been cleared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief J P Nadda much before the elections If Nitish Kumar becomes Bihar chief minister, despite winning less number of seats (as compared to the BJP), he should thank the Shiv Sena for it Our strike rate in Bihar is 80% and if we had been given more seats, we would have contributed more to the MGB tally BJP’s victory in Bihar is vindication of PM @ narendramodi’s good governance, especially during COVID19. Poorest of poor were taken care of by the government. That Bihar didn’t slip back to Jungle Raj is very important for India. Thank every Bihari for trusting NDA again BJP Bihar chief Sanjay Jaiswal Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut CPM leader Sitaram Yechury Tejasvi Surya, national president, BJP Yuva Morch Those calling us that have got a befitting reply and their mouths will now be shut in the future as well AIMIM national spokesperson Asim Waqar CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOGGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ WARANGAL ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI BJP does better than Nitish’s JD(U); focus now on naming the new CM RJD has highest vote share, is single largest party, but alliance flounders Oppn momentum falters as Cong fails to match even its score in 2015 Owaisi eats into Oppn’s Muslim vote share in Seemanchal, set to get 5 SE A T IF ever there was a cliffhanger of an election, with the pendulum swinging wildly by the hour, this was it. Till late evening, the day belonged to the alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal (United), prompting the BJP to prepare for a grand victory celebration at the central party office in the heart of Delhi. But the ladoos, firecrackers and dhols had to be put on hold as the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led mahagathbandhan closed in, turning the Bihar election 2020 into an edge of the seat thriller. Till midnight the ruling alliance was still marginally ahead, with leads/wins in 122 out of the 243 seats while the mahagathbandhan had 114. But the results/trends also exposed the fault lines between the BJP and the JD (U). This was because the JD (U) was the biggest loser, relegated to a distant third at 43 seats, down nearly 30 from its 2015 tally. For this, it openly blamed Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party . While the LJP just won a single seat, it ate up 5.7% of the vote share, cutting into the JD(U)’s base. More significantly, Chirag had openly worked against chief minister Nitish Kumar during the campaign F-WA while praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With such a close race not witnessed in a long time and throwing up many possibilities, BJP leaders Sushil Modi, Bhupendra Yadav, Ntiyanand Rai and Sanjay Jaiswal rushed to Nitish’s residence, remaining closeted till late at night and reassuring the chief minister that he was their leader. Union home minister Amit Shah also called Nitish. But whatever be Nitish’s grudge against Chirag, the election results only underlined his waning appeal. The mass mood was that he had become arrogant in the last five years, ruling the state through an unpopular and inaccessible bureaucracy. So even if he becomes the first Bihar CM to rule for a fourth straight BIHAR 2020 term, his position is bound to be much weaker. In 27 seats the margins were so thin that the Rashtriya Janata Dal smelt a rat. Party leader Tejashwi Yadav filed a written complaint with the Election Commission in Patna, complaining of being robbed of at least seven seats. But addressing the media past 10 pm, EC officials in New Delhi denied the charge. The election result was also a story of what might have been for the young Tejashwi. Throughout the campaign he drew large crowds and created a huge hype around the unemployment problem in the state. BIHAR MAHAGATH BANDHAN M ARK @ Patna/New Delhi AL 243 122 BJP: 73 ■ JDU: 43 ■ VIP: 4 ■ HAM: 4 RAJESH THAKUR & MANISH ANAND H Y ■ L TA S 124 NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE TO NDA ASCENDANT IN SEESAW ■ 113 8 OTHER PARTIES ■ ■ ■ CPM: 2 ■ CPI: 3 ■ CPIML: 12 ■ Cong: 19 ■ RJD: 77 AIMIM: 5 BSP: 1 ■ IND: 1 LJP: 1 BYPOLL OUTCOME Wins + leads in 59 seats across 11 states MADHYA PRADESH (28) BJP 19 | Cong 9 GUJARAT (8) BJP 8 UTTAR PRADESH (7) BJP 6 | SP 1 MANIPUR-5 BJP 4 Independent 1 BJP activists exult as the NDA does well in the Bihar Assembly polls, in Patna on Tuesday | PTI But that didn’t translate into votes. The uniform view for this failure was that Tejashwi was unable to shake off the widespread feeling among the people that if the RJD came to power, it would mean the return of the jungle raj. This fear of a return to lawlessness was repeatedly stressed by Modi and Nitish at rallies and on the face of it, jungle raj trumped unemployment. “The NDA campaign on the return of the jungle raj created a kind of fear psychosis among the voters,” said R K Verma, a political analyst. The numbers also signaled a deeper churning in state politics, with sub-regional factors playing out. While the NDA did exceedingly well in the Seemanchal, Mithila, Champaran and Ang regions, the mahagathbandhan performed better in the Bhojpur, Magadh and central parts of Bihar. The election also saw the emergence of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen as a force in some Muslim-dominated areas, harming the RJD. The AIMIM benefited from its alliance with Mandalite parties such as the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party and helped itself by winning five seats, up from one it held in the outgoing assembly . KARNATAKA (2) BJP 2 JHARKHAND (2) Cong 1 | JMM 1 ODISHA (2) BJD 2 CHHATTISGARH (1) Cong 1 NAGALAND (2) NDPP 1 Independent 1 TELANGANA (1) BJP 1 HARYANA (1) Cong 1 BJP sweeps bypolls in MP, UP, Gujarat; wrests Dubbakka seat from TRS M A N I S H A N A N D @ New Delhi IF the bypoll verdict on Tuesday is any indicator, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to have arguably got the nation’s endorsement for his Covid-19 management, as the BJP bagged or was leading in as many as 40 on 59 Assembly seats across 11 states where they were held. The biggest gainers were Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Manipur counterpart N Biren Singh, as they were assured of stability on the back of the BJP’s sweeping victories in both the states. Barring Haryana and Telangana, ruling dispensations managed to control the bypoll narrative elsewhere. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath further consolidated his hold, winning six of the seven Assembly by-election seats at stake. Chief ministers B S Yediyurappa (Karnataka), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha) and Hemant Soren’s alliance (Jharkhand) bagged two seats each in their respective states. In Gujarat, the BJP government led by Vijay Rupani won all eight Assembly bypoll seats. The big surprise came from Telangana as the BJP bagged the Dubbaka Assembly seat with a slender margin. Its nominee M Raghunandan Rao trounced Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) candidate Solipeta Sujatha by 1,118 votes. By wresting the seat, the party got bragging rights for taking its ambitious Mission South agenda forward. The BJP’s performance came despite its national leadership staying away from the campaigns, focus as it did on the Bihar Assembly polls instead. The party’s state leaders demonstrated their dominance over the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, while denying opportunity to the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh to make a comeback. Defector Jyotiraditya Scindia delivered on his promise as the BJP shrugged off a spirited Kamal Nath-led Congress campaign to win 19 of the total 27 Assembly seats. In Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Manipur, the BJP’s fortunes rode on imports from the Congress in recent times. As for the big picture, BJP leaders sought to read in the outcome a vote of confidence of the people in the leadership of the prime minister amid the Covid-19 pandemic. DRAMATIC VICTORY M Raghunandan Rao (BJP): 63,352 1,64,669 Total votes polled BOULT FROM THE BLUE TRS SMEAR CAMPAIGN FLOPPED: RAGHUNANDAN C Srinivas Reddy (Cong) After sealing his victory in Dubbaka, BJP candidate M Raghunandan Rao said he will not be deterred by cases filed against him by the ruling TRS. Receiving a certificate from Returning Officer Chennaiah after he was declared the winner, Raghunandan expressed his heartfelt gratitude to party leaders | P4 22,196 S Sujatha (TRS) 62,273 BJP candidate M Raghunandan Rao celebrates his victory in front of the Siddipet Police Commissionerate on Tuesday. He has constantly alleged that the police were filing false cases against him on the behest of the ruling TRS Saffron surge in Dubbaka exposes cracks in TRS R P R I D H V I R A J @ Hyderabad THE Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s (TRS) defeat in the Dubbaka bypoll appear to be indicative of the changing patterns in the political kaleidoscope in Telangana. The outcome of the bypoll has also seemed to have driven yet another nail in the Congress’ coffin as it lost its security deposit. The keenly fought byelection exposed cracks in the TRS citadel as Dubbaka is in Siddipet, which is the home district of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, and the party’s campaign was spearheaded by his nephew and Finance Minister T Harish Rao. As the elections to two seats of the Telangana Legislative Council (Graduates) and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation are also Our next target is Sircilla (which KTR represents). This is the beginning of the end of KCR’s tyranny and his family rule. The future is ours Bandi Sanjay Kumar, BJP State president round the corner, there is enough reason for the TRS to worry on how it should rework its strategies to get back to being numero uno. The defeat has come as a shocker to the pink party as it had not tasted reverses in any byelection held after the formation of Telangana State in 2014. In fact, in the recent bypoll in Huzurnagar, vacated by TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy after his election to Lok Sabha in 2019, the TRS won hands down, confining the BJP to the fringes. Now, in the absence of any emotive issues, the TRS had banked on its welfare schemes to sail through the Dubbaka bypoll. Harish Rao had toured the constituency extensively after KCR set a target of getting a onelakh majority for the TRS nominee. Though it had charismatic leaders, the anti-incumbency against the government had worked against the sitting MLA’s widow S Sujatha, who could not match her BJP rival Raghunandan Rao. The BJP, after its dismal show in the 2018 Assembly elections, when it won only one seat (Goshamahal), rebounded in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and picked up four seats, including Nizamabad, which was represented by KCR’s daughter CONTINUED ON P4 Kavitha. I thank the people of Dubbak for blessing @BJP4Telangana. This is a historic win and gives us strength to serve the state with greater vigour. Our Karyakartas worked very hard and I laud their noteworthy efforts in furthering BJP’s development agenda Narendra Modi, Prime Minister INSIDE EARLY DIWALI FOR BJP AS PARTY WORKERS CELEBRATE WIN I P2 TRS LEADERSHIP WILL INTROSPECT DEFEAT: KTR I P3 GRINDING HALT TO PINK PARTY’S WINNING STREAK I P4 BJP EYES GHMC POLLS, SETS HEART ON ASSEMBLY-2023 I P4 Trent Boult (L) picked up 3 wickets as Mumbai Indians restricted Delhi Capitals to 156/7 in the IPL final at Dubai on Tuesday. Shreyas Iyer top-scored for Delhi with an unbeaten 65 | SPOTZPICS