Fate of 12 ministers, Speaker to be decided in third phase of Bihar polls

By Sahil Pandey & Abhishek Bhardwaj
Patna (Bihar) [India], November 6 (ANI): The third phase of election to 78 seats in Bihar on Saturday will decide the electoral fate of 12 ministers and some other prominent candidates including Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) president Mukesh Sahni, Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary and former union minister Sharad Yadav's daughter Subhashini.
Eight ministers from JD-U are in the fray in the third phase of polling. They include Bijendra Prasad Yadav from Supaul, Narendra Narayan Yadav from Alamnagar, Maheshwar Hazari from Kalyanpur, Ramesh Rishideo from Singheshwar, Khurshid alias Firoz Ahmed from Sikta, Lakshmeshwar Roy from Laukaha, Bima Bharti from Rupauli and Madan Sahni from Bahadurpur.
Four ministers from BJP - Pramod Kumar (Motihari), Suresh Sharma (Muzaffarpur), Binod Narayan Jha (Benipatti) and Krishnakumar Rishi (Banmankhi) - are also in the fray.
The wife and daughter-in-law respectively of Vinod Kumar Singh (BJP) and Kapil Deo Kamat (JDU), who were ministers and died recently, are also in the fray from Pranpur and Babubarhi.
Sharad Yadav's daughter Subhashini Yadav is making her debut from Bihariganj seat on Congress ticket.
Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary is contesting from the Sarairanjan seat, where a triangular contest is underway between JDU, RJD and LJP.
About 2.34 crore voters are eligible to cast their vote in the third phase.
There are 1204 candidates, including 382 independents. A total of 110 women candidates are in the fray including former Vaishali MP Lovely Anand, who joined RJD and is contesting from Saharsa, JD(U)'s Bima Bharti, Veena Bharti, Nutan Paswan and Leshi Singh, LJP's Urmila Sinha and BJP's Kavita Devi and Nisha Singh.
Gaighata has a maximum 31 candidates, while Dhaka, Triveniganj, Jokihat and Bahadurganj have the least number of nine candidates each.
Valmiki Nagar is the largest assembly constituency area-wise, whereas Saharsa is the largest in terms of the size of the electorate. Hayaghat is the smallest assembly constituency.
Several seats in the third phase election have a sizeable presence of minority voters. AIMIM is contesting 19 seats in this phase.
The state witnessed 55.69 per cent polling in the first phase of elections on October 28 and 53.51 per cent in the second phase held on November 3.
The state assembly has 243 seats and results will be declared on November 10. (ANI)