Bihar election 2020: Baisi to witness triangular fight

The largely rural constituency of Baisi, which comes under the Kishanganj parliamentary constituency, is one of the 78 seats that will go to polls in the third and final phase of the Bihar assembly elections on November 7. The seat is dominated by Muslims and in the 2020 assembly elections is set to witness a triangular contest.

From the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Binod Kumar as its candidate. The party has won the seat only once, in 2010, when Santosh Kumar defeated the Congress nominee by over 9,000 votes. From the grand alliance, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has fielded the sitting MLA Abdus Subhan. This seat is pertinent to the RJD as it has captured the seat four times.

In 2015, Subhan had defeated Binod Kumar, who had then fought as an independent candidate, by 38,740 votes. Syed Rukunuddin came in third in the 2015 elections as he fought the election on Jan Adhikar Party’s (JAP) ticket. But this time, Rukunuddin is fighting the election on All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen’s (AIMIM) ticket making the contest a triangular fight.

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The Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM is focussing extensively on the 19 seats where Muslims hold the key, Baisi being one of them. The party attempts to expand its footprint beyond parts of Muslim-dominated Telangana and Maharashtra. The party could make a major dent in the RJD votebank but Owaisi has continuously hit out at his detractors for labelling the AIMIM as a vote-splitter.

As per the voter list of 2019, there are 2,68,642 electorates and 261 polling stations in this constituency. Voter turnout was 68.15% in 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 65.44% in the 2015 assembly elections.

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