Karakat (Incumbent: Mahabali Singh - JD(U))
2024 contest: Upendra Kushwaha (NDA candidate) vs Rajaram Singh (CPI(ML)L)
The counting of votes for the highly anticipated Lok Sabha Elections commenced on Tuesday with CPI (ML)L’s Raja Ram Singh leading by around one lakh votes.
After Bhojpuri superstar Pawan Singh threw his hat in the ring, Karakat Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar witnessed a cliffhanger of a contest. Banking on his star appeal, Singh, whose decision to contest as an Independent led to his expulsion from the BJP, was locked in a multi-cornered contest.
Established in the delimitation of 2008, comprising three assembly segments each of Rohtas and Aurangabad districts, Karakat has, so far, always voted for the BJP-led NDA, which is backing former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha this time.
As if the presence of Singh was not enough, the pitch was queered further for NDA and INDIA with the entry in the fray of Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM, which fielded Priyanka Chaudhary, a local zila parishad member, in whose favour the Hyderabad MP campaigned.
Kushwaha had won the seat on his debut in 2014 and the feat earned him a berth in the Union Council of Ministers. By the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he was out of the NDA and ended up losing the seat to Mahabali Singh of JD(U), from whom he had wrested the constituency five years earlier.
2024 polls: The total number of registered voters in this constituency in 2024 polls was 1872409, and the seat saw a voting turnout of 54.28%, according to the Election Commission’s data. The seat went to polls in phase 7 on June 1, 2024.
In the 2019 LS Polls, Mahabali Singh of JD (U) won from Karaket, getting 398,408 votes, comprising 45.86% of the total number of votes polled. He defeated RLSP’s Upendra Kushwaha by a margin of 84542 votes. Kushwaha had won from this seat in 2014 as well, polling 338892 votes (42.90%) and defeating Kanti Singh of RJD by a margin of 105241 votes.
