Bihar:NDA marks comeback, Grand Alliance fails

After over 15 hours of counting, and allegations of cheating, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was announced as winner of the Bihar election in the  early hours of Wednesday. The NDA eased past the majority mark of 122 in the 243-member Assembly.The opposition, led by the RJD's Tejashwi Yadav, put up a strong fight but eventually fell short. However, with 75 seats the RJD is the single-largest party. The Congress, viewed by many as the reason for the opposition's failure to go all the way, contested 70 seats but won only 19. Chirag Paswan's LJP, which was the source of much frustration for Nitish Kumar, won just one seat.
Shortly before the results were confirmed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah both tweeted and thanked the people of Bihar for "backing the NDA's development agenda". PM Modi said the NDA would "work for the balanced development of every person, every region" of the state. Mr Shah said: "Every section of Bihar has... backed the NDA's development agenda" and added: "This is a win for the double-engine development of PM Modi and Nitish Kumar".
Late Tuesday night the RJD and the Congress accused Nitish Kumar and his deputy, the BJP's Sushil Modi, of ordering district and election officials to favour the JDU-BJP in close contests. The Election Commission, to whom the opposition said it would complain, dismissed such claims and said the results had been delayed only because of additional measures in place during the coronavirus lockdown.The results have defied almost all exit polls that had predicted a victory for the RJD.

Results for all seats announced. NDA wins 125 seats (BJP 74, JDU 43, VIP 4, HAM 4). Mahagathbandhan wins 110 seats (RJD 75, Congress 19, Left 16) and

AIMIM wins 5, BSP wins 1, LJP wins 1 & Independent wins 1

In Madhya Pradesh,BJP won 19 assembly  while the Congress had to remain content with nine seats. The byelections were necessitated after Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia defected to the BJP in March this year with 22 of his loyalist MLAs. This led to the fall of the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in the state.