The Assembly elections in Bihar will be held in two phases on November 6 and November 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday. The counting of votes will take place on November 14.

Bihar has 243 constituencies, including 38 for Scheduled Castes and two for Scheduled Tribes.

Speaking at a press conference, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said that in the first phase, 121 constituencies will go to the polls.

The date of the issue of the notification is October 10 and the last date of nomination is October 17, Kumar said. The last date of the withdrawal of candidature is October 20, he added.

In the second phase, polling will be held in 122 constituencies. The notification for this phase will be issued on October 13. The last date for filing nominations is October 20, and the last date for withdrawal of candidatures is October 23.

Kumar also announced that bye-elections to eight Assembly constituencies in seven states and Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Punjab, Telangana and Rajasthan – will be conducted on November 11.

The counting for these seats will also be held on November 14.

On Bihar, Kumar said that the polls in the state were the “mother of all elections”.

For the first time, one general observer each will be assigned to all the constituencies in Bihar, he said. One police observer will also be stationed in each of the 38 districts in the state, the chief election commissioner added.

In addition, all polling booths will have webcasting facilities, Kumar added.

The Assembly elections in Bihar are being held after the special intensive revision of state’s electoral roll. At least 47 lakh voters in the state have been excluded from the final roll published by the poll panel on September 20 after the conclusion of the exercise.

During the press conference, Kumar said that the special intensive revision exercise “purified” the voters’ list after 22 years.

“We have an ERO [Electoral Registration Officer] in each of the 243 constituencies,” he said. “They were assisted by 90,207 BLOs in completing the exercise, which has purified the voters’ list after 22 years.”

On Sunday, Kumar said that among the new initiatives being introduced by the poll panel for the Bihar polls was the reduction of the number of electors per polling station to 1,200, down from the existing limit of 1,500.

“Earlier, long queues used to form, especially during the final hours of polling,” said Kumar. “This change is aimed at cutting congestion and reducing waiting times.”

The elections will be the first since Kumar took office in February.

The last Assembly elections in the state were held in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, polling had taken place in three phases, between October 28 and November 7, and votes were counted on November 10.

The voter turnout in 2020 was 56.93%.

The upcoming elections will see the ruling National Democratic Alliance government, led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, face off against the Opposition alliance comprising the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress.

In 2020, the Rashtriya Janata Dal had emerged as the single largest party with 75 seats. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) together won 117 seats as part of the NDA.

This time, former political strategist Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj will also contest the polls.

On Saturday, the BJP in Bihar urged the Election Commission to complete the poll process in one or two phases.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with a poll panel team led by the chief election commissioner, state BJP chief Dilip Jaiswal contended that if the election is held in several phases, the expenditure of the candidates increases and the functioning of government institutions is hampered.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal demanded that the Assembly elections be held in not more than two phases, as “not much time is left [for expiry of the term of the current Assembly]”.

Voter roll revision

The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission on June 24.

As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.

The draft rolls were published on August 1 and kept open for “claims and objections” by individuals and political parties until September 1.

As many as 7.2 crore electors were listed in the draft rolls, while 65.6 lakh names were removed from it.

Of these, 22 lakh were due to deaths, 36 lakh were of persons who had permanently shifted or were untraceable and seven lakh were duplicate entries, the Election Commission had said at the time.

At least 47 lakh voters in the state were excluded from the final roll published on September 20.

Concerns had been repeatedly raised that the revision process could disenfranchise many voters.

Several petitioners had also moved the Supreme Court against the exercise. Earlier this month, the court directed the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar cards as a valid identity proof for the ongoing special intensive revision.

The Aadhaar card was not among the 11 documents that the poll panel had said could be submitted as proof of citizenship. Several petitioners had objected to the exclusion of Aadhaar, the most widely held ID, from the list of permissible documents, calling it “absurd”.

The court had earlier said that the entire exercise could be set aside if it was found to be illegal.

The next hearing in the matter is scheduled on October 7.

The Election Commission has defended the voter roll revision as a clean-up exercise to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants ahead of the elections.

A Scroll analysis of the data published by the Election Commission on August 1 showed that women made up 55% of voters who were excluded from Bihar’s draft voter list after the revision.

It also showed that five of the state’s 10 districts with the largest share of Muslim population had the highest number of excluded voters.

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