PATNA, July 30 -- The Bankipur by-poll will take place on Thursday with total 3,79,616 eligble voters to decide the fate of 25 candidates in the fray including nominees from the BJP, opposition RJD and Jan Suraaj Party ( JSP). There are total 422 polling stations in the assembly constituency. For the last few weeks, since the nomination started on July 6, there has been a high decibel campaign by prominent candidates. The multi-cornered poll battle is mainly among BJP's Neeraj Kumar , RJD's Rekha Gupta and JSP's Prashant Kishor, who is making his electoral debut. The by-poll has been necessitated after Nitin Nabin, who won the seat in 2025 assembly polls, resigned as MLA after being elected to the Rajya Sabha following his appointment as BJP national president in January this year. Being a sitting seat of the BJP, the ruling party has carried an intense campaign including road shows by top leaders over the past few weeks to reach out to voters even as RJD and JSP too have done outreach programmes and road shows. Poll observer R Tiwari maintained the by-poll was crucial in many ways for all the major parties especially the BJP, which had maintained its stronghold in the constituency by winning the seat for last many decades without much difficulty. "But this time, whoever wins would have his/her victory by a small margin as there is going to be tough fight among all the major players, who have their traditional voters in the constituency. For the BJP, it's a high stakes poll as it has the challenge of retaining the seat whereas for the JSP, it's a question of the party's future as Kishor is contesting for the first time. RJD too has its stakes high as the party is keen on making its inroads in Patna where it has low representation in urban constituencies," said Tiwari. Meanwhile, the Patna district administration has beefed up security in the capital ahead of Thursday's by-polls with security personnel in adequate numbers deployed at the booths as well as on patrolling duty. There will be web casting in all polling stations while there would also be facility to keep mobile phones outside the polling booths by the voters. Voters not having voters' photo identity cards would have option to show 12 other alternative documents for establishing their identity at the booths, officials said. The counting of votes will take place on August 3 at AN College here....