Kumar Bahukhandi
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)
For the first time in two decades, Bihar will vote in just two phases — on November 6 and 11 — the Election Commission (EC) announced Monday, continuing a trend of shorter polling schedules across states. Counting and, subsequently, election results will be announced on November 14.
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, the polling was held in four phases. The latest reduction follows the Commission’s move last year to hold the Jammu and Kashmir polls in three phases — the briefest in at least 28 years.
The elections will see the incumbent NDA government of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar go up against the Opposition alliance of the RJD and Congress. Last time, the RJD was the single largest party with 75 seats, but the BJP and JD(U) together had 117 seats. A new entrant, Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj, is likely to contest this time.
The term of the 243-seat Bihar Assembly comes to an end on November 22. The announcement comes just a day after the Commission’s visit to Bihar on October 4–5 to review preparations for the polls. Political parties had asked the EC to hold polling after the Chhath festival, which is from October 25 to 28, and also suggested reducing the number of polling phases.
Apart from taking political parties’ feedback into account, the decision to reduce voting phases also stems from the Commission’s effort to keep polling schedules shorter after the prolonged Lok Sabha elections in 2024 — held amid an intense heatwave — were cited as a reason for the dip in voter turnout. In several cities, temperatures in May hovered close to 50°C as large parts of the country faced extreme heat.
The 2024 Lok Sabha polls were spread over seven phases, making them the second-longest parliamentary elections in the country’s history since 1951–52.
Acknowledging an error in judgment, then Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar had said, “Elections should have been completed a month earlier. They shouldn’t have been held in such hot weather. It is a big election that involves a lot of forces. There is a lot of movement. We cannot reduce the time taken for the process, but it could have been done earlier instead of in such heat.”
Following that experience, the EC has since sought to reduce the number of phases in subsequent state Assembly elections.
The Bihar elections will be the first Assembly polls since the EC decided on June 24 to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the country, starting with Bihar. In a break from the practice of the past two years, the EC decided to prepare the electoral rolls afresh instead of carrying out only annual and pre-election revisions. After the Bihar SIR, the electoral roll of the state was trimmed by 68.5 lakh voters, with an addition of 21.53 lakh, leaving the total registered electors at nearly 7.42 crore. The EC’s decision to conduct an SIR has been challenged in the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hold the next hearing on Tuesday.
The Bihar elections are also the first Assembly polls announced by the Commission since Kumar took over as CEC in February this year.
The last Bihar elections, held in 2020, were the first Assembly polls to be conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. That time, there were three phases of polling spread from October 28 to November 7, with counting of votes on November 10. The turnout in 2020 was 56.93%, with women’s turnout at 59.69% and men’s at 54.45%.
