Purnea Lok Sabha seat: Independent candidate Pappu Yadav trails by 12,460 votes

Purnea Lok Sabha seat: Independent candidate Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav, is trailing in the Purnea Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar on Tuesday.

As of 3pm ,Pappu Yadav is behind JD(U) candidate Santosh Kumar by a margin of 12, 460votes.

Yadav, who is contesting as an Independent, was allotted “scissors” as his election symbol. Follow full coverage of the Lok Sabha elections.

Pappu Yadav has represented the seat thrice, in the 1990s, winning by huge margins, twice as an Independent and once on the ticket of Samajwadi Party, which is a major force in Uttar Pradesh but has never been a serious player in Bihar.

His wife, Ranjeet Ranjan, is currently a Congress Rajya Sabha member. In the 2019 LS polls, Yadav lost from Madhepura, where he fought as an Independent, while his wife lost in Supaul, where she was in the fray as a Congress candidate. In 2014, she had won from Supaul. The Congress is contesting nine seats in Bihar, which has a total of 40 parliamentary constituencies.

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After falling out with Lalu Yadav in 2015, he had formed Jan Adhikar Party (JAP), which he merged with Congress on March 20 this year.

In this election, Yadav's plea for a "friendly fight" with RJD, a domineering ally, also did not resonate with the Congress leadership, despite his support of “fighting to make Rahul Gandhi the Prime Minister.”

A master of optics, Yadav filed his nomination papers as an Independent, and a motorcycle procession on the occasion created a buzz that is said to have irked the NDA and the INDIA bloc alike.

Purnea, which has more than 22 lakh voters, went to poll on April 26 in the second of the seven phases of the parliamentary elections.