Two-phase Bihar elections on Nov 6, 11

The Assembly elections in Bihar will be conducted in two phases on November 6 and November 11 while counting of votes will take place on November 14, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar announced at a press conference here on Monday.

Of the 243 seats in the politically important state, 121, including Patna, Siwan, Madhepura, Buxar and Muzaffarpur, will go to the polls in the first phase. The remaining 122, including Pashchimi Champaran and Purvi Champaran, Kishanganj, Purnia and Gaya, will vote on November 11. The term of the current Assembly ends on November 22.

The elections are expected to be a direct contest between the ruling NDA led by the JD(U) and BJP, and the opposition RJD-Congress Mahagathbandhan even as the state this time has a third front in the form of Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party.

The 2020 Assembly poll were conducted in three phases and saw a narrow victory with 125 seats for the NDA (BJP 74, JD-U 43, Others 8) against 110 (RJD 75, Congress 19, Others 16) of the Mahagathbandhan.

Interestingly, the polling will be held in the shadow of the special intensive revision (SIR), which the CEC had repeatedly described as "shuddhikaran" (purification) of electoral rolls while the opposition challenged the exercise in the Supreme Court.

On queries related to the actual number of illegal immigrants or foreigners found during the SIR, the CEC gave a generic reply, saying “election registration officers (EROs) prepared the voter list after utmost scrutiny, following which 65 lakh names were initially deleted and three lakh in the second stage, taking the total deletions to 68 lakh”. “Many of the voters whose names were deleted were either found to be dead, had permanently shifted or had their names registered at more than one places," said Kumar.

Responding to questions on allegations of vote theft levelled by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who had also undertaken the 'Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in the state, the CEC said “people had full faith in the poll body and the Election Commission (EC) had complete trust in Bihar people”. “The SIR process had taken place transparently. Initially, there were some apprehensions among voters. But once these were cleared, people of Bihar also supported the EC," Kumar said.

He, however, maintained that the SIR was meant to ensure only eligible individuals voted, and pointed to the discovery of Nepali and Bangladeshi nationals in Bihar’s voter list. He said post-SIR, registered voters in Bihar reduced from 7.9 crore to 7.42 crore.

On pan-India launch of the SIR, he said the decision had already been taken by the EC and preparations for it were underway. He brushed aside questions on personal attacks on him by Rahul Gandhi and even the poll body targeting the Leader of the Opposition, seeking response from him on signed affidavits over allegations of surge in number of voters in Mahadevapura Assembly seat in Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat. "I don't want to comment on political rhetoric. In a democracy like ours, all these things happen," he said.

On the BJP continuously raising the issue of scrutiny of 'burqa'-clad women voters or those female voters who covered their faces with ‘dupattas’, the CEC said anganwadi workers would help in checking the identity of such voters, if required and as per the set directions of the EC.

For the first phase, the last date of filing of nominations is October 17 while the scrutiny will take place on October 18. The last date for withdrawal of candidature will be October 20. In the second phase, nominations will have to be filed by October 20, scrutiny will take place on October 21 while the deadline for withdrawal is October 23.

The CEC said it was mandatory to complete the counting of postal ballots before the last two rounds of counting of votes.