PATNA: Despite losing six of the 11 seats it contested in the just concluded Bihar legislative council polls, CM Nitish Kumar's JD(U) would continue to remain the largest party in the state Upper House.
The JD(U) has 23 members, the highest, in the legislative council. The five new members declared elected on Thursday would take its total strength in the 75-member council to 28. BJP is the second largest party with 15 members. With the addition of 7 new members, it would have 22 MLCs.
After the Thursday results for 24 council seats from the local body constituencies, RJD will have 11 MLCs, Congress 4, CPI 2, Independents 5, RLJ, HAM-S 1 and VI.
In the 2015 elections for the 24 local authority seats, JD(U) had won five - Gaya (Manorama Devi, wife of Bindi Yadav), Nalanda (Reena Yadav), Nawada (Salman Ragib), Muzaffarpur (Dinesh Prasad Singh) and Bhagalpur (Manoj Yadav).
RJD's three MLCs - Radha Charan Sah (Bhojpur-Buxar), Dilip Rai (Sitamarhi) and Sanjay Prasad (Munger) later joined JD(U), taking its number to eight. Congress MLC Rajesh Ram (West Champaran) also joined the JD(U) later, taking its number to nine from the 24 MLCs from the local authority constituencies.
Against its natural claim on the nine 'sitting' seats, BJP offered JD(U) 11 seats to contest. BJP kept the remaining 13 seats for itself and offered one seat of its share (Vaishali) to Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras-led RLJP.
Besides its nine 'sitting' seats, JD(U) was allotted Patna and Madhubani seats to contest. In fact, Madhubani was a 'sitting' seat of the BJP.
Besides badly losing Patna and Madhubani seats where its candidates finished third and fourth, respectively, the JD(U) also lost its sitting seats like Gaya, Nawada, Munger and West Champaran.
JD(U)'s Salman Ragib had won the Nawada seat in the last three elections. But this year he lost to Independent and RJD rebel Ashok Yadav.
JD(U)'s Muzaffarpur candidate Dinesh Prasad Singh is the only MLC who has won all the four elections in 2003, 2009, 2015 and 2022.
