The Election Commission of India on Tuesday night rejected the RJD’s claim that 119 candidates of the Gathbandhan had been declared elected.

The deputy election commissioner in charge of Bihar, Chandra Bhushan Kumar, said at 10pm: “The results of 146 seats have been declared, and in 97 cases the trends are available.”

Umesh Sinha, the Election Commission’s secretary-general, added: “The commission has never been under anyone’s pressure and whatever procedure needs to be followed will be done, taking the natural course of time to declare the results.”

“Data comes to us after being authenticated and after being scrutinised by the returning officers and observers. It comes to us via due procedure. There can be a gap in the information they (the RJD) have and the official information,” Sinha added.

This was the Election Commission’s third media briefing on Tuesday. The votes were being counted under the new norms laid down for the pandemic.

At 8.50pm, the RJD tweeted a list of 119 seats where it claimed that the Gathbandhan candidates had won after the completion of counting.

“The returning officer congratulated them for the victory, but now they are not giving certificates and are saying that we have lost. They were also shown as victorious on the ECI website. Such loot will not be allowed in a democracy. After winning 119 seats, 109 are being shown on TV. Nitish Kumar is calling up the officers and getting the fraud done...,” the RJD tweet said.

The party added that in Munger, the RJD candidate’s postal votes were being declared invalid and four EVMs are not being counted.