Tejashwi elected Grand Alliance legislature party leader claims NDA won by deceit

    Patna, Nov 12 (PTI) RJD's Tejashwi Yadav was on
Thursday elected the leader of the Grand Alliance legislature
party and promptly hit out at the NDA, claiming it won the
assembly elections through "deceit".
    Addressing a press conference, Yadav mocked Chief
Minister Nitish Kumar, whose JD(U) has been relegated to the
third position in terms of seat tally, and wondered whether
the latter would "heed his conscience and give up his
attachment to the chair".
    He was obviously referring to Kumar resigning and
snapping ties with the Grand Alliance before returning to the
NDA fold in 2017 after Tejashwi's name had cropped up in a
money laundering case. Kumar had then said he was stepping
down after heeding his conscience (atma ki awaaz).
    Yadav claimed the people's mandate was for a change
but it was manipulated.
    "It was undoubtedly a mandate for change. The NDA won
by dhan, bal and chhal (money, muscle power and deceit," he
alleged.
    Asked whether the Mahagathbandhan would try to muster
numbers to form its own government, he said, "We will go to
the people who gave the mandate. If they express such a wish
we will act accordingly."
    Quoting election data, he claimed the NDA got only
12,270 votes more than the Mahagathbandhan.
    "How can it convert into their victory in 15 more
seats than us? We believe that had the counting of votes been
fair, we would have returned with a tally of more than 130
seats," said Yadav, whose coalition has won 110 seats, 12 less
than the magic figure of 122. The NDA clinched 125 seats.
    He said his alliance will write to the Election
Commission and point out the "discrepancies".
    "In so many constituencies, postal ballots were
counted in the end and not at the beginning of counting which
is the norm. Moreover, there were seats where as many as 900
postal ballots were invalidated," the RJD leader alleged.
    "We suspect this was done to offset the support we had
received from a large number of servicemen who were moved by
our commitment to one rank, one pension scheme. We demand
recounting of postal ballots in all such constituencies and
the process be videographed," Yadav asserted.
    The 31-year-old former deputy chief minister alleged
that errant polling officials had acted like a "prakoshth"
(cell) of the BJP, and replied in the affirmative when asked
if legal remedy could be explored if the EC did not
satisfactorily address the concerns. PTI NAC
SK SK

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)