About 24.41 per cent voter turnout was registered till 11 am for the five Lok Sabha seats of Araria, Jhanjharpur, Supaul, Madhepura and Khagaria in Bihar on Tuesday, officials said.
Over 98 lakh voters will decide the electoral fate of 54 candidates in these five seats in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections.
Candidates whose fate will be decided by voters include sitting MP Pradeep Singh of the BJP, whose bid to hold the Araria seat has been challenged by RJD's Shahnawaz. His late father Taslimuddin, a former Union minister, had wrested the constituency from Singh in 2014 despite the Modi wave.
The RJD is also locked in straight battles with JD(U) in Madhepura and Supaul.
Madhepura, which RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav won twice, is seeing JD(U) MP Dinesh Chandra Yadav being challenged by Kumar Chandradeep, who teaches English at a college in Patna. He's the son of late Ramendra Kumar Yadav, who had been a member of both Houses in Parliament.
In adjoining Supaul, the RJD has fielded Chandrahas Choupal, its MLA from one of the two reserved assembly segments falling in the Lok Sabha constituency.
Jhanjharpur has gone to the Vikassheel Insan Party (VIP) headed by former state minister Mukesh Sahni, who belatedly joined the Mahagathbandhan and got
three seats from the RJD's quota of 26, in a state where the total number is 40.
In Khagaria the contest is primarily, between two debutants. Sitting MP Mehboob Ali Kaiser, who won the seat twice on the trot for Lok Janshakti Party of late Ram Vilas Paswan, has been denied a ticket by the latter's son Chirag, whose party is now known as LJP (Ram Vilas). It has instead fielded Rajesh Verma, pr
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