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Vajpayee's men take the lead in Bihar

The Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal-United combine has retained four seats and conceded two to the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress alliance in Bihar.

The BJP won the Khunti (reserved), Giridih and Ranchi seats and its ally, the JD-U, retained Hajipur (reserved) seat. But the BJP conceded Koderma to Congress and the JD-U lost Arrah to the RJD.

BJP candidate and Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has established an unassailable lead, of over 126,000 votes, in Hazaribagh.

Union Minister of State for Forest and Environment Babu Lal Marandi is set to retain the Dumka (reserved) seat in the Jharkhand region.

RJD candidates of Gaya, Jehanabad and Muzzaffarpur, who were ahead of their rivals in the earlier stages, are now trailing.

The BJP-JD-U-People's Party combine, thus, is leading in 23 constituencies, while the RJD-Congress alliance is set to bag just six seats.

The BJP-JD-U combine leads in Nalanda, Hazaribagh and Jamshedpur, while the ruling RJD is ahead in Arrah, Bagha and Vaishali.

Those declared elected are:

Hajipur: Ram Vilas Paswan won the seat.

Khunti (ST): Karia Munda of the BJP defeated Sushila Karketa of the Congress by 26,000 votes in a triangular contest. The party retained the seat.

Koderma: Congressman Tilakdhari Singh defeated R L P Verma of the BJP by 10,140 votes. The party gained the seat.

Defence Minister George Fernandes is racing ahead in Nalanda.

The Jharkhand party candidates are yet to make headway in any constituency.

Aurangabad: Shyama Singh of the Congress is leading by 18,000 votes over Sushil Kumar Singh of the JD-U.

Gopalganj: Raghunath Jha of the JD-U is leading by 7000 votes over Kali Pandey of the RJD.

Siwan: RJD's Mohd Sahabuddin is leading by 50,000 over Iqualakh Ahmed of the JD-U.

Sitamarhi: The JD-U's Nawal Kishore Rai is leading by 5000 votes over Surya Deo Rai of the RJD.

Darbhanga: Kirti Azad of the BJP is leading by 13,223 votes over his nearest RJD rival Mohd Ali Ashraf Fatmi.

Vaishali: The RJD's Raghuvansh Prasad Singh is leading by 5000 votes over his nearest rival Lovely Anand.

Former Union minister and RJD leader Kanti Singh has established a good lead in the Bikramgunj constituency in central Bihar.

The counting for the 49 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state was delayed in the morning for procedural reasons and the official trend in the first round of counting started pouring in only after 1730 hours.

Counting in the Katihar parliamentary constituency would be taken up on Thursday as polling in two assembly segments there was held only on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, the Patna high court had ordered that the result of the Madhepura constituency be withheld until the Election Commission heard JD-U candidate Sharad Yadav or his representative tomorrow about the complaint of largescale rigging.

Election to four seats -- Purnea, Rajmahal, Khagaria and Bhagalpur -- was postponed to October 28 because of severe floods.

UNI

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