The voting for the Kurhani assembly seat is underway on Monday in Bihar's Muzaffarpur, where over 3 lakh voters are deciding the fate of 13 candidates belonging to different political parties.
The voters queued up as soon as the polling began to cast their vote. As per the notification from the State Election Commission, the voter turnout till 9 am was reported as 11 per cent for the Kurhani seat.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) both in the direct fray in the contest to mark their victory at the Kurhani seat, post the formation of the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar, these elections are the first time when both the parties are in direct contest with each other.
Earlier RJD MLA Anil Kumar Sahani was disqualified from the seat in a fraud case which has caused this bypoll.
The Kurhani bypolls are a four-round fight between Bihar's ruling party candidate Manoj Kushwaha, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen's Mohammed Ghulam Murtaza, and BJP's Neelabh Kumar and Kedar Prasad Gupta.
Ahead of the polls, all the parties in the fray campaigned for their respective candidates-- CM Nitish Kumar and Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav campaigned for Manoj Kushwaha on Friday. In contrast, the BJP campaigned for its candidate with MP Ravi Kishan.
Meanwhile, polling is underway for the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh and Assembly seats in Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh.
The voting for high voltage by-elections will continue till 6 pm.
( With inputs from ANI )
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