New Delhi: Elections for the 243-seat Bihar Assembly will be held in two phases on November 6 and November 11, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India Gyanesh Kumar announced on Monday. The counting will be done on November 14.
Byelections to the Nuapada Assembly Seat in Odisha will also be held on November 11.
The number required for the majority in the Bihar Assembly is 122. While the NDA has 125 seats at the moment, the INDI Alliance has 114 MLAs under its fold. There are four Independents.
Bihar has an electorate of 7.42 crore. This year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has taken measures to limit the number of voters in each polling station at 1,200. For this, there will be 90,712 polling stations, with the average number of voters in each being 818, Kumar said.
“There will be webcasting facilities at all booths to facilitate central monitoring. This is the ‘Mother of All Elections’,” the CEC said.
While the Janata Dal (United) or JDU under chief minister Nitish Kumar and its lead partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in addition to the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) or HAM, and other allies forming the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), are looking to retain power. the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of Tejashwi Yadav, along with the Indian National Congress (INC) and others of the INDI Alliance, hopes to upset its plans.
A new entrant being watched in the Bihar assembly election 2025 is the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) of former poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who has started his full-time political career from his native state of Bihar. Prashant Kishor says Jan Suraaj Party will contest all 243 seats.
Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) is an ally of the BJP at the Centre. Chirag is a minister in the NDA government at the Centre. His LJP contested the 2020 Bihar assembly polls on his own but could not make a big impact. The LJP has split since with Chirag Paswan’s uncle Pashupati Paras leading another faction. Chirag Paswan now hopes to become “kingmaker” in case of a hung verdict.
Other parties in the fray as part of alliances or otherwise include the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, the Vikassheel Insaan Party; and the Left parties among which the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation or CPI(ML)-L is the most prominent in Bihar.
