Bihar Assembly Election 2025 Voting Date: The Bihar elections are also the first Assembly polls announced by the Commission since Kumar took over as CEC in February this year. (PTI Photo)Bihar Assembly Election 2025 Voting, Full Schedule, Result Date: For the first time in at least two decades, Bihar will vote in just two phases – on November 6 and 11 – with the results to be announced on November 14. The Election Commission (EC) announced the much-awaited schedule Monday, continuing its recent practice of shorter polling durations.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar said there were many reasons for the shorter poll duration. “Voter awareness, availability of CAPFs (Central Armed Police Forces), the assessment of law and order and the enhancement in the capacity of the EC and its officials – looking at all these factors, it was felt appropriate to conduct the elections in two phases,” he said.
In the run-up to the polls, the EC held the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, with the final list announced only days ago, on September 30. Taking everyone by surprise, the EC had announced on June 24 that it would prepare electoral rolls afresh, instead of carrying out annual and pre-election revisions which have been the norm for the past two decades.
The decision has been challenged in the Supreme Court, and the EC’s announcement of Bihar poll dates came a day ahead of a hearing on the matter.
Over the past three Assembly elections, Bihar’s polling schedule has steadily shortened, from six phases in 2010 to five in 2015 and three in 2020. In 2005, polling was held in four phases.
This time, the first phase will see polling in 121 Assembly constituencies in central Bihar, and the second phase will cover 122 seats, in the north, east and south.
The term of the 243-seat Bihar Assembly comes to an end on November 22.
Kumar said the EC would set up 90,712 polling stations for Bihar’s 7.43 crore electors – 3.92 crore men, 3.50 crore women and 1,725 belonging to the ‘third gender’.
The EC announced the poll dates after a two-day trip to Bihar – October 4 and 5 – to review the preparations. At their meetings with the EC, political parties requested that polling be held after the Chhath festival, lasting from October 25 to 28, and suggested reducing the number of polling phases.
Apart from this feedback from parties, the EC is reportedly wary of a repeat of the prolonged 2024 Lok Sabha elections – held over seven phases, making them the longest since 1951-52 – with the summer heat waves that commenced cited as a reason for the dip in voter turnout. In several cities, temperatures in May hovered close to 50°C.
Acknowledging an error of judgment in the timing of the polls, then CEC Rajiv Kumar had said, “Elections should have been completed a month earlier… We cannot reduce the time taken for the process, but it could have been done earlier instead of in such heat.”
Last year, the EC held elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in three phases – the briefest in at least 28 years.
The Bihar elections will see the incumbent NDA government of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar go up against the Opposition’s Mahagathbandhan, chiefly comprising the RJD, Congress and Left. Last time, the RJD had emerged as the single largest party with 75 seats, but the BJP and JD(U) together had 117 seats. All eyes this time are on how well the new entrant, Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, does.
The EC also announced by-polls in eight Assembly constituencies, two in Jammu and Kashmir, and one each in Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Telangana, Punjab, Mizoram and Odisha on November 11. The counting for the eight seats will be held the same day as Bihar, on November 14.
Gyanesh Kumar is overseeing his first Assembly election, having taken over as the CEC in February this year.
At Monday’s press conference, he listed the 17 “new initiatives” by the EC since he took office, listing webcasting of voting in all booths, a mobile phone deposit facility for voters, and keeping the number of voters per polling booth at 1,200 electors or less.
Asked about the SIR, which the EC has said would be done nationally, Kumar said the commission would decide on the schedule for the other states.
One of the reasons given by the EC for conducting the SIR was to remove “foreign nationals” who may have got enrolled as voters. Asked several times during the press conference as to how many such individuals had been found in the SIR, the CEC did not give a number, only saying that “some” of those 68.5 lakh deleted from the poll rolls were foreign nationals.
Asked about a demand by the BJP that the identity of women voters wearing burqa be verified, the CEC said anganwadi helpers would be deployed at all polling stations and would check the identities if needed. It won’t be the first time that the EC would do so.
The last Bihar elections, held in 2020, were the first Assembly polls to be conducted while Covid was on. The turnout was 56.93%, with women’s turnout at 59.69% and men’s at 54.45%.
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