Patna (Bihar) [India], November 14 : As early trends showed the ruling NDA leading in the Bihar Assembly elections, Congress leader Udit Raj blamed the Election Commission and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists for his party's poor performance.
He claimed that many objections raised about discrepancies in the voter lists were ignored, calling it a "murder of democracy," and said the results reflect the SIR process rather than a BJP-JD(U) victory.
Speaking to ANI in Patna, Udit Raj said, "SIR is leading. I won't say that this victory is of the BJP-JD(U); this is a victory of the Election Commission, of SIR. After the voter list was sanitised, lakhs of discrepancies were pointed out, but the EC didn't respond to even one. When objections were being raised, 89 lakh objections were raised. Still, EC said that nobody is raising any complaint. When they stoop to this level of cheating, what can we say? This is murder of democracy..."
"If you delete the names of Opposition voters and send back thousands of voters despite them having digital slips...there was a wave of change in Bihar...BJP leaders were chased away by people at several locations. So, how are they winning? I feel this is a victory of SIR," he said.
Earlier, in a post on X, Udit Raj wrote, "SIR is moving towards victory (SIR jeet ki taraf badh rahi hai)."
This is the first assembly election in the country in two decades, which was conducted following a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.
The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has crossed the halfway mark of 122, while the Opposition's Mahagathbandhan is trailing behind, according to the Election Commission of India.
According to the leads on 229 seats, the NDA was leading at 167 seats, with the Bharatiya Janata Party's lead on 71 seats and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) ahead in 72 constituencies. Chirag Paswan's LJP(RV) was leading on 18 seats.
The BJP and the JD(U) have maintained a high conversion rate of 67 per cent and 64 per cent, respectively.
Mahagathbandhan was trailing behind, with a lead of just 60 seats. While Tejashwi Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was leading on 43 seats, its allies showed an underwhelming performance as per the early trends. Congress was leading on 8 seats, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation was leading on six seats.
Meanwhile, AIMIM is ahead in two seats.