Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) victory now brings its tally at par with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won two seats. JD (U) and Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) won a seat each while Independents won two seats. (File Photos)While the BJP had started celebrating its improved tally in MLC polls, with CM Samrat Choudhary even congratulating the party’s Darbhanga Graduate seat candidate Sarvesh Kumar, the second preference voting sprang a pleasant surprise for RJD candidate Anil Kumar Jha.Jha, who had trailed in all 10 rounds of first preference counting behind BJP’s Kumar, defeated him by a margin of 450 votes after approximately 60 hours of continuous counting and second-preference vote transfers.Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) victory now brings its tally at par with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won two seats. JD (U) and Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) won a seat each while Independents won two seats.Under the election rules, a winning candidate must cross a specific quota. In this instance, it is 31,911 votes (50% of valid votes + 1).As neither Kumar nor Jha secured enough first-preference votes to hit this threshold outright, the election moved into elimination and preferential counting.As the second preference got underway, lower-ranking candidates, including Rajni Kant Pathak of the Congress and Dr Imteyaz Noorani of Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) were eliminated one by one, and their ballots were re-allocated based on the second and subsequent preference votes.Jha received a majority of the second-preference transfers from eliminated candidates. This substantial influx of transferred votes allowed him to erase the BJP’s initial lead and surpass Kumar in the final elimination stages to claim the seat.Story continues below this adThis way, the ruling BJP has failed to win any of the two Darbhanga seats.Notably, BJP state president Sanjay Saraogi hails from Darbhanga and represents it in the Assembly.Elections for Members of Legislative Council (MLC), the President of India, and Rajya Sabha use the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system with proportional representation.Instead of placing an ‘X’ or marking a single candidate, voters rank candidates in order of preference on their ballot paper: 1 for their first choice, 2 for their second choice, 3 for their third choice, and so on.Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008. Expertise ... Read More