NEW DELHI, Nov 6: An estimated 64.66 per cent of the electorate exercised their franchise in the first phase of polling in Bihar on Thursday for 121 Seats in the 243-member State Assembly.
Before this, the highest figure for an Assembly election in Bihar was 62.57 per cent in 2000. For Lok Sabha elections, the state’s highest voter turnout was 64.6 per cent in 1998. In a statement, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar thanked voters for coming out in such large numbers and poll workers for their dedication.
The increased voter turnout is all the more significant because the special intensive revision of the state’s voter lists – a contentious exercise the opposition called an attempt to disenfranchise voters from poor and marginalised groups who, they claimed, traditionally vote for them deleted nearly 47 lakh names from the voters’ list, from 7.89 crore before to 7.42 crore after SIR. – could account for the increased turnout percentage, but only if the actual number of voters is the same.
The turnout in the first phase is 7.37 per cent higher than the overall turnout for 2020 and 8.46 per cent more than in the first phase that year, which was 56.2 per cent. The voting for the remaining 122 seats will be held on November 11 and the counting of votes on November 14.
The Mahagathbandhan chief ministerial candidate and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav was among a handful of high-profile names in the first phase. He is contesting from the family stronghold of Raghopur, which has voted for his father, Lalu, and his mother, Rabri Devi, seven times in the past nine elections. Yadav has held this seat since 2015.
Other high-profile seats that voted today were Tarapur, from where Deputy Chief Minister and BJP state unit boss Samrat Choudhary contested, Alinagar, where popular folk singer Maithili Thakur is the BJP pick, and Mokama, where drama followed JDU pick Anant Singh’s arrest in a murder case.
The RJD emerged as the single-largest party after the 2020 election with 75 seats, one more than the BJP. The JDU was third with 43 and the Congress, an RJD ally, was fourth with 28.
(Manas Dasgupta)