These ballot papers mentioned the names and symbols of 12 candidates, including BJP's Sanjay Paswan and RJD's Vijay Kumar Choudhary who are in the fray in Nawada. The presiding officer of the booth, Surendra Nath Sinha, has held these ballot papers, Nos 1046092 to 1046100, invalid. But Jamshedpur Deputy Commissioner-cum-Returning Officer has declined to explain why in his constituency booth numbers 126 and 138 carried electoral lists in which scores of bonafide voters whose names figured in the electoral lists provided to the contestants by him, did not figure at all. An autopsy of violence on polling day showed that, of the 39 killed, Palamau took the heaviest toll: 18 dead and 10 injured. Hazaribagh had 12 dead and 10 injured andChatra had six dead and eight injured.

Remarkably, in Naxalite-hit Jehanabad, represented by the RJD's Surendra Prasad Yadav, there was only one incident of violence that resulted in the killing of a CRPF jawan. Even in Gaya and Sasaram, represented by BJP's Krishna Chaudhary and Munni Lal, in 1998-99, the toll was two killed and five injured. Official figures available here reveal that there was 50-70 per cent polling in those villages in Gaya, Hazaribagh, Chatra and Palamau where the RJD was on a weak wicket and Naxalites called for a poll boycott.

Election Commissioner GVG Krishnamurthy visited Bihar in July and, later, in a press release , declared that ``special arrangements'' were being made to ensure that law was not breached in the State during polls. He paid a second visit to the State on September 9. But, except the metal sticker on ballot boxes to prevent malpractices, the EC did not introduce any other measures to ensure fair polling.

In Bishrampur village of Palamau district, for example,the polling percentage was 62. But in Balumath village of the same district where the BJP obtained an overwhelming support among the electorate, the poll percentage was nil.