The Bihar Assembly election results have delivered a blow to Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan’s ambitions but the LJP appears to have cut into Nitish Kumar’s JDU, which the young leader had vowed to pull down.

The LJP won one seat as the counting continued into the night. In 2015, the party had won two seats.

Chirag had vowed to uproot chief minister Nitish, while praising the BJP and describing himself as the “Hanuman” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and gone alone in the polls. The LJP contested 136 seats, including 115 that the JDU fought.

The 38-year-old Bollywood actor-turned-politician’s intentions were manifold: to eat into JDU votes, win enough seats to play kingmaker in case of a hung Assembly, and emerge from the shadows of his father, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan who passed away in October, to establish himself as a leader to reckon with in Bihar.

Chirag appeared to have succeeded in one — cutting into the JDU’s votes.

The JDU was on Tuesday night leading in only 43 seats, almost 30 less than its 2015 Assembly election tally, and had been pushed into third position.

Asked if Chirag had failed, a senior LJP leader said on the condition of anonymity: “Has he really failed? You must not see from the prism of the number of seats won. Chirag has established our party as a force to reckon with in the state. He has shown Nitish his place.”

A perception had gained ground in the run-up to the elections that Chirag had the blessings of the top BJP leadership and had been tasked with cutting Nitish to size. Although the BJP has denied such a plan, its senior leaders stayed silent when Chirag attacked Nitish. Prime Minister Modi praised Ram Vilas in one of his campaign rallies, intensifying speculation that Chirag had the backing of the BJP brass.

The JDU tried to downplay the Chirag factor. “Some chirag (earthen lamp) tried to burn our party, but fizzled out in the process,” JDU leader Ajay Alok said.

JDU Bihar unit executive president Ashok Choudhary said: “We were expecting that the BJP would get more seats than our party because some people were hell bent on ensuring that we get less seats. We will evaluate everything.”

Although the LJP, which has polled 6 per cent votes, is likely to be in the good books of the BJP for the blow to Nitish, Chirag’s party and the leader himself appeared to have lost their stature as independent entities.