Campaign ends in Bihar for sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls

Campaign ended on Friday for eight Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, which go to polls in the sixth phase of the general elections on Sunday. The constituencies are Sheohar, Valmiki Nagar, Pashchimi Champaran, Purvi Champaran, Siwan, Gopalganj, Maharajganj and Vaishali all of which were won by the NDA in 2014.

Of these, Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP holds the Vaishali seat, while the remaining were won by the BJP, which has given up Valmiki Nagar and Siwan in favour of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and fielded its sitting MPs from their respective seats. Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again led the charge in the run-up to the penultimate phase of the polls with a rally in Valmiki Nagar tucked in the remote north-west corner of the state along the Indo-Nepal border.

BJP president Amit Shah held election meetings in as many as five Lok Sabha constituencies, including Purvi Champaran from where Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh is in the fray. Singh, 69, is serving his fifth term as the MP from Purvi Champaran, earlier known as Motihari. The cabinet minister, who has announced this to be his last election, also had Chief Minister of adjoining Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath canvassing in his favour.

The veteran is pitted against a greenhorn - 27-year-old Akash Singh of the RLSP, fielded by the 'Mahagathbandhan'. He is the son of Congress Rajya Sabha member Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who had defeated Radha Mohan Singh in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls when he was contesting as a candidate of Lalu Prasad's RJD. In Siwan, the RJD has fielded don-turned-politician Mohd Shahabuddin's wife Hina Shahab, who has unsuccessfully contested the seat - represented by her husband a number of times until conviction in a murder case disqualified him from entering the fray - in 2009 and 2014.

The seat was won by BJP's Om Prakash Yadav in 2014 but is being contested by the JD(U), which has fielded young MLA Kavita Singh, married to another local muscleman Ajay Singh. Sitting BJP MP Janardan Singh Sigriwal's bid to retain Maharajganj has been challenged by RJD candidate Randhir Kumar Singh, whose father Prabhunath Singh has represented the seat on the tickets of the RJD and the JD(U). At present, he is serving a sentence in a murder case.

In Vaishali, former Union minister and veteran RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh seek to wrest the seat from the LJP, which has replaced sitting MP Rama Singh, a mafia don-turned-politician, with Veena Devi, who was recently with the BJP. Before being defeated in 2014, Singh had represented Vaishali four times on the trot.

In Pashchim Champaran, Sanjay Jaiswal seeks to retain the seat for his third consecutive term. His principal challenger is RLSP's Brijesh Kushwaha. In Valmiki Nagar, NDA is represented by JD(U)'s Baidyanath Mahto, who had won the seat in 2009, but lost it five years later to BJP's Satish Chandra Dubey when the two parties fought separately.

The principal challenger is Shashwat Kedar of the Congress, whose grandfather Kedar Pandey had served as a chief minister of Bihar and later the railway minister during Indira Gandhi's tenure. Sheohar is witnessing a battle between incumbent Rama Devi of the BJP and RJD's Syed Faisal Ali - a Delhi-based journalist hailing from the Magadh region, whose candidature from the north Bihar constituency had led to rumblings within the party.

Gopalganj, a reserved seat, is currently held by BJP's Janak Ram, who has made way for JD(U)'s Alok Kumar Suman. The NDA candidate's bid is being challenged by Surendra Ram of the RJD.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)