BJP's candidate R K Singh faces tough fight in Arrah district in Bihar

Time was when the walls of Arrah were plastered with graffiti saying “mudikatwa se sawdhan” (beware of the head-chopper). A lot of water has flown in the sandy Sone in Bihar since then, but the politics of Arrah stills revolves around the age-old fight between rightist saffron and leftist red.

It's one of the first districts in Bihar where the earliest sparks of the ultra-left movement began. Once a stronghold of the Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) wrested it in 1989. The Leftists, however, couldn't hold on to the constituency because Arrah soon turned into a Janata Dal/Rashtriya Janata