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ok Sabha poll results from Bihar have come as a huge setback for Congress party chief Rahul Gandhi who had devoted much time to the state, hoping to improve his party’s prospects there this time.

But the poll outcome has proved quite distressing because the Congress lost seats wherever Gandhi addressed election rallies.

As per the report, Rahul went to Bihar six times to address election rallies and addressed the crowd in locations like Purnia, Katihar, Gaya, Supaul, Samstipur and Bikram (Patna) while he also held a roadshow in Patna in support of party’s Patna Sahib candidate Shatrughan Sinha. Strangely, the Congress and its allies lost those seats to the rival Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.

What was stranger, Rahul didn’t go to Kishangaj to campaign for his party candidate Mohammad Javed Ashraf and Ashraf won from this seat! Ashraf defeated his nearest Janata Dal United (JD-U) rival by little over 34,000 votes. What was further startling was that Shatrughan Sinha lost his election by over 284,000 votes from the Patna Sahib seat which incidentally had registered the lowest poll percentage in the state.

The Congress party had contested elections for nine seats under the seat-sharing arrangement, but managed to

But the final outcome proved disastrous for the NDA which was able to win only 58 assembly seats out of total 243 in the state assembly. The embarrassment Modi faced is underlined from the fact that of the 26 districts where the PM held election meetings, the NDA scored a duck in six.

Likewise, of 26 assembly segments where he addressed the voters, 10-BJP-held seats were snatched by the RJD and the Congress. It was only in four districts that Modi could leave his impact.

One of the reasons why NDA had flopped in the last state elections was that the RJD, Congress and the Janata Dal United (JD-U) led by chief minister Nitish Kumar had fought the elections under one umbrella. This time, however, Kumar’s JD-U fought the LS polls in alliance with the BJP.

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