The Bihar Legislative Assembly Election 2025 will be held in two phases, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced Monday.
While voting in the first phase will be held on November 6 (Thursday), the second phase of polling will take place on November 11 (Tuesday). Counting of votes will be held on November 14 (Friday) and the entire election exercise will be completed by November 16 (Sunday).
The announcement was made at a press conference held by the Election Commission this evening. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar told the media that the ECI aims to conduct the Bihar polls in a transparent and peaceful manner.
‘Aim is free and fair Bihar polls’
“The Election Commission intends to conduct peaceful, fair, and transparent elections. For this to happen, the Commission expects cooperation from all political parties, voters, and the media,” the CEC said.
“We request all political parties to cooperate with the Election Commission in ensuring transparent elections. They should appoint polling booth agents at every booth, actively participate in the randomisation of EVMs and VVPATs, and remain vigilant at the strong room,” he added.
The CEC announced that for the first time, the EC is appointing one general observer for each of 243 constituencies and one police observer each for 38 districts.
ECI announces byelections in 8 assembly seats across 7 states/UTs
He further stated that the poll panel has made it mandatory to complete the counting of postal ballots before the last two rounds of counting of EVM votes, in order to bring in further transparency in the vote counting process.
The poll panel chief said this time, webcasting will be done from 100 per cent of the booths in Bihar, compared to 50 per cent earlier, in order to ensure full transparency. Further, the CEC said candidates’ photos will be printed in colour on EVM ballot papers as they were unhappy with their black-and-white photographs. The font size has also been increased.
‘Purified voters’ list’
It may be noted that the 2025 Bihar election is being held after the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the state, which led to the deletion of 68.5 lakh voters and addition of 21.5 lakh new names.
In relation to this, the CEC said Bihar has shown the way to the nation on “purifying” voter lists.
According to Kumar, the final voters’ list post the SIR exercise has been given to all political parties, and post the date of filing of nomination, the final voters’ list will be released.
According to the CEC, the people of Bihar can still get their names added to the voters’ list till 10 days before the filing of nomination papers by candidates.
Addressing the allegations of partiality against the ECI, CEC Kumar told the press briefing, “There is no case of partiality as everything is transparent. The people of Bihar have contributed to the SIR process. None of the voters had complaints, and if there were any, they were resolved by the EROs. The main reasons behind the deletion of names are deaths, unproven citizenship, or permanent migration to other states. All data has been shared with the political parties.”
Constituency and electorate details
A total of 90,712 polling stations have been set up in the state, the CEC said, adding there will be an average of 818 voters per polling station.
Bihar has a total of 243 Assembly constituencies, of which 38 are reserved for the Scheduled Castes and two are reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, the CEC stated.
Kumar further said that there are a total of 7.43 crore voters in Bihar of which 3.92 crore are male voters and 3.50 crores are females. Further, 14 lakh voters are first-time voters.
The term of the current Bihar Legislative Assembly is set to expire on November 22.
The main contest in Bihar will be between the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, and the Mahagathbandhan, spearheaded by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
In the current Bihar Assembly, the NDA has 131 MLAs – BJP has 80, JD(U) has 45, HAM(S) has four, and two are Independents. The Mahagathbandhan, on the other hand, has a total of 111 MLAs – 77 of RJD, 19 of Congress, 11 of CPI(ML), and two each of CPI(M) and CPI.