Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal retained Mokama by a handsome margin on Sunday while the BJP managed to hold on to Gopalganj by the skin of its teeth in the bypolls.

This was the first test of ballots in the state since chief minister Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal United quit the NDA and shook hands with the Grand Alliance to form a new government in August.

In Gopalganj, the BJP’s pocket borough since 2005, the party scraped through with a margin of 1,794 votes, possibly aided by Asadduddin Oaisi’s AIMIM and an estranged Lalu relative cutting into what is considered the RJD’s traditional vote base.

BJP candidate Kusum Devi polled 70,053 votes against RJD candidate Mohan Prasad Gupta’s 68,259.

The seat had fallen vacant after its BJP MLA Subhash Singh died earlier this year. The party fielded his wife Kusum Devi and had been expecting to reap sympathy votes.

In Mokama, jailed gangster Anant Singh’s wife Neelam Devi bagged 79,744 votes to win the seat with a margin of 16,741 votes. She contested on an RJD ticket. Her opponent Sonam Devi, wife of gangster Nalini Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, bagged 63,003 votes.

The bypoll in Mokama was necessitated after Anant, an RJD MLA, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for possessing illegal arms and lost his membership of the Assembly. The BJP contested the seat after a gap of 27 years and had got the support of Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party leader and muscleman Suraj Bhan Singh.

The BJP had previously won the Gopalganj seat in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020 with comfortable margins. The margin had been over 36,000 in 2020. Its performance this time indicates that the party has lost ground to a resurgent Grand Alliance with the arrival of Nitish.

Political experts pointed out that the BJP could retain Gopalganj only because the AIMIM put up a candidate, Abdul Salam, who bagged over 12,000 votes. Another factor was that Lalu’s estranged brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav fielded his wife Indira Yadav as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. She polled around 9,000 votes.

A majority of these 21,000 votes are supposed to have come from the RJD vote bank. The AIMIM and BSP candidates cut the Muslim and Yadav votes that traditionally go to the RJD in Bihar.

“We might have lost Gopalganj but with a slender margin. We are working towards a ‘BJP-mukt Bharat’ (BJP-free India) and we are succeeding at it. Those who came in 2014 will not be there in 2024. We won Mokama comfortably despite the BJP making all-out efforts during the campaign there,” RJD spokesperson Shakti Yadav said.

Nitish had not campaigned for the bypolls after suffering injuries in a steamer mishap in the Ganga, but he had issued video messages asking the people to support the RJD candidates.

The BJP tried to put up a brave face, celebrating the Gopalganj win. Bihar BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal said: “Our seat remained with us while the RJD retained its seat. The poll pundits had deemed the bypolls a BJP versus eight-party Grand Alliance fight and predicted our defeat. However, we won. Politics in Bihar is now polarised between the BJP and the RJD. We thank our workers and supporters.”

Jaiswal slammed the Nitish government over the deteriorating law and order and asserted that the BJP would continue to play the role of an aware Opposition.

BJP spokesperson and legislator Syed Shahnawaz Hussain said all the Grand Alliance parties “could not stop the lotus from blooming in Gopalganj. No alliance will work against our party. We have lessened the victory margin in Mokama. The RJD has not won there. It is a victory of Anant Singh.”

Hussain said the BJP would now focus on the Kudhani Assembly bypoll in December. The seat was held by the RJD.