"Mentally Ready To Serve Bihar People": BJP's Maithili Thakur To NDTV

BJP's Maithili Thakur, contesting her first election, told NDTV she is "mentally ready" to serve the people of Bihar as exit polls predicted a big win for the National Democratic Alliance or NDA.

Nine exit polls - Chanakya Strategies, Dainik Bhaskar, DV Research, JVC, Matrize, P-Marq, People's Insight, Peoples Pulse, TIF Research - have predicted an NDA victory, with figures ranging from 130 to 167. The Mahagathbandhan's score, they predict, will be between 73 and 108. 

Health warning: Exit polls often get it wrong.

"I don't think for even a second whether I will win or lose because I am so happy and satisfied with my 30-day journey. I have complete faith. I feel like I will be living here and serving people, so I am mentally prepared for that," Maithili Thakur told NDTV's Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal. 

The 25-year-old, a celebrated Maithili folk singer, said contesting the polls was the "best decision of my life". 

"I think this was the best decision of my life. And the way I have learnt in these 30 days by living among people, I could not have learnt this from any book or any other source, and this one month has changed my entire life," Thakur, who is contesting from Alinagar constituency of Darbhanga, told NDTV when asked about her experience of contesting polls.

"My political experience was zero. In one month I have learnt that how above anything else is the respect, affection and love of the people, and how by staying among the people you listen to all their problems first, and how you can help them, because politics gives you such a platform, it also gives you such a power, that you can solve the problems of the people very efficiently," she said.

"Creating a personal manifesto for your constituency, the one our party has given you, is essential. Delivering it to the masses, how to deliver all those things and amenities to the people, and correcting flaws as you go along. Politics has given me that foresight," she said.  

Bihar, which voted in two phases, reported a record voter turnout of 66.90 per cent, provisionally, which is 9.6 percentage points more than the last assembly polls, the Chief Electoral Officer Vinod Singh Gunjiyal said.

In the 2020 assembly polls, the state recorded a voter turnout of 57.29 per cent.

The votes for the 243-seat assembly will be counted on November 14.