Bihar's Emergency-era verdict
What happened
Bihar handed power to a brand-new opposition party, ending Congress's long grip on the state government.
The Janata Party won 214 of the 324 seats on offer, a landslide that gave it a comfortable majority.
Its nearest rival, the Indian National Congress, saw its own seat count collapse to just 57.
What changed
The party that won this election hadn't even existed at Bihar's previous vote.
It went from 0 seats to 214, a debut that made it the state's largest party overnight.
About 49.7% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot, a share that dipped slightly from the previous election.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from the result are worth knowing on their own.
Even with such a wide majority, the JNP took only 42.7% of the vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate.
The closest race: Mandar, Bihar was decided by just 31 votes — the smallest margin, how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second, of any seat that year.
By contrast, Mahua, Bihar saw the widest gap of the night, with the winner finishing 70.9% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.
Patna West, Bihar had the largest pool of registered voters of any seat that year, 1,60,817 in all.
The backdrop
This was a sharp break from Bihar's earlier pattern of results, with an entirely new party taking charge of the state government for the first time.
Following the Janata Party's national victory after the Emergency (1975-77), Bihar's assembly was dissolved and a fresh election held on 10 June 1977. The Janata Party won 214 of 324 seats, and Karpoori Thakur was sworn in as Chief Minister later that month, holding the office for a second time.