More than 500 candidates out of a total of 607, who fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections across the 40 seats in Bihar, had lost their deposits at the hustings, according to ECI data.

The total number of candidates who forfeited their deposits were 512, while 607 were left in the fray out of 709 who had filed their nominations.

In Muzaffarpur, 27 out of 29 candidates lost their deposits, the highest number for any constituency in the state. Only BJP’s Ajay Sahni, who won, and Congress’ Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who was the runner-up, were spared the ignominy.

At seven, the lowest number of lost deposits was reported from Kishanganj but it was primarily because only nine candidates were in the fray.

The election in the Muslim-dominated constituency, appears to have been highly polarised as the winner, late Mohd Asrarul Haq of the Congress, bagged 53.15 per cent of votes, followed by Dilip Kumar Jaiswal of the BJP who secured 32.19 per cent votes.

In yet another indication of the polarized nature of the electoral battle in the 2014 polls, only the winners and the runners-up were able to save their deposits in as many as 25 constituencies in the state.

As per party-wise data, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) lost its deposits in 23 out of the 38 seats it had contested in the state and also saw its tally plummet to only two from 22 in 2009. Mayawati’s BSP, which announced that it would be contesting all the 40 seats in the 2019 elections, had lost its deposit in as many as 38 constituencies. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had also failed to make a mark in Bihar as it lost deposit in 39 seats. The Congress, which was bolstered with a pre-poll alliance with the RJD and the NCP, lost nine out of the 11 seats that it had contested but had to forgo deposits in only a couple of seats.

According to norms fixed by the EC, a candidate loses his or her deposit in the event of securing less than one sixth of the total number of valid votes polled in a constituency.

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