NEW DELHI: As counting begins at 8am for Bihar’s 243 assembly seats, all eyes will be on Tarapur, where Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Samrat Chaudhary faces his first electoral test on a saffron ticket. He faces RJD’s Arun Shah and JS’s Santosh Singh. The seat, part of Munger district and falling under the Jamui parliamentary constituency, is being closely watched as a key indicator of the BJP’s attempt to consolidate non-Yadav OBCs and upper-caste voters in the state.

For the last three assembly elections, Tarapur remained with the JD(U), represented by Mewa Lal Choudhary, who retained it in 2020. But under this year’s NDA seat-sharing arrangement, the constituency has gone to the BJP, setting up a fresh contest between Samrat Chaudhary, RJD’s Arun Shah, and Jan Suraj’s (JS) Santosh Singh.In the 2020 assembly election, JD(U)’s Mewa Lal Choudhary had defeated RJD’s Divya Prakash by 7,225 votes, securing 64,468 votes (36.93 per cent) against 57,243 (32.8 per cent). LJP’s Mina Devi and Independent Rajesh Kumar Mishra followed with over 11,000 and 10,000 votes respectively. Tarapur recorded a turnout of 55 per cent, with 1.74 lakh valid votes out of 3.17 lakh electors. Five years earlier, in 2015, JD(U)’s ML Choudhary had defeated HAM(S) candidate Sakuni Choudhary by nearly 12,000 votes, polling 66,411 (43.62 per cent) to 54,464 (35.77 per cent).This time, the focus is on whether Samrat Chaudhary – who belongs to the Koeri (non-Yadav OBC) community – can expand BJP’s social reach in a seat that has historically backed JD(U)’s local leadership. The result will also test how effectively the NDA has managed its transition after the latest round of seat swaps.