Shankar Singh won the Rupauli assembly bye-poll in Purnea.

Shankar Singh won the Rupauli assembly bye-poll in Purnea district.

Patna July 13: Independent candidate Shankar Singh won the Rupauli assembly bye-poll in Purnea district with the margin of 8204 votes against JD (U) candidate Kaladhar Mandal.

After the counting of all 12 rounds, Shankar Singh has received 67782 votes, while Kaladhar Mandal, who was leading until the sixth round, has obtained 58578 votes.

This is the second time when an independent candidate defeated the JD (U) candidate in Purnea district. Earlier, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav defeated JD (U) candidate Santosh Kushwaha in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.

RJD candidate Bima Bharti ended up in third place with 30114 votes. she trailed by a significant margin of 37668 votes. NOTA has obtained 5675 votes.

A total of 11 candidates were in the fray and only 4 candidates reached more than 1000 votes after the final round of counting. Independent candidate Lalu Prasad Yadav obtained 1418 votes.

Shankar Singh earlier associated with Lok Janshakti Party Ram Vilas (LJPRV) and also won the assembly election in the past on LJP ticket. He sought the ticket from Chirag Paswan to contest from LJPRV but he was denied. Hence, he contested the assembly bye-poll of Rupauli as an independent candidate.

The bye-election in the Rupauli assembly constituency was held on July 10 and the election commission had recorded 52.75% voting. The figure was much lower than the 2020 assembly election when the election commission had registered 61.19% voting.

The Rupauli seat of Purnea district was vacant after Bima Bharti resigned from the post of MLA and JD (U) to contest the Lok Sabha election on the ticket of RJD. She lost that election too.

EOM.