Voting began for 121 seats in Bihar in the first phase of assembly elections on Thursday morning, amid tight security arrangements, an official said. The polling commenced at 7 am and will continue till 5 pm.
In the first phase, a total of 3.75 crore voters will decide the electoral fate of 1,314 candidates, including top leaders such as INDIA bloc's chief ministerial face Tejashwi Yadav and Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary of the BJP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to electors to cast their votes with full enthusiasm. "Today marks the first phase of the celebration of democracy in Bihar. I urge all voters in this phase of the assembly elections to cast their votes with full enthusiasm," he wrote on X. He also said, "On this occasion, my special congratulations to all my young friends in the state, who are casting their votes for the first time. Remember: first vote, then refreshments!"
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also urged voters to exercise their franchise in the "celebration of democracy" and congratulated the young electors who are casting their votes for the first time.
Yadav appealed to voters to participate in the polling process and said, "Voting is crucial for the sake of democracy, the Constitution, and humanity." The RJD candidate aims at a hat-trick in the Raghopur seat, while his principal challenger, Satish Kumar of the BJP, had defeated his mother Rabri Devi in 2010 while contesting on a JD(U) symbol.
Choudhary, who is enjoying his second consecutive term in the legislative council, is contesting a direct election after about a decade from Tarapur. The former state BJP president faces a stiff challenge from RJD’s Arun Kumar Sah, who had lost the seat in 2020 by a margin of about 5,000 votes.
The other Deputy CM in the Nitish Kumar government, Vijay Kumar Sinha, will also have his electoral fate decided in the first phase of polls. Sinha hopes to retain Lakhisarai for the fourth consecutive term, surmounting the not-so-formidable challenge provided by Amresh Kumar of the Congress and Suraj Kumar of the Jan Suraaj Party.
Mangal Pandey, a minister and a former state BJP president, is contesting from Siwan, the first instance of his fighting an assembly election. Pandey, who has been an MLC since 2012, faces a formidable adversary in RJD’s Awadh Bihari Chaudhary, a former assembly Speaker who has been a several-term MLA from the seat.
The neighbouring seat of Raghunathpur is being keenly watched because of Osama Shahab, the 31-year-old son of deceased gangster-turned-politician Mohd Shahabuddin, a several-term MP from Siwan who was known as the “uncrowned king” of the area. Osama’s candidature has been latched onto by the NDA, which cites it as proof that the RJD stood for “return of jungle raj”, and BJP leaders like Himanta Biswa Sarma have even pointed out that the name reminded one of slain terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
One of the most keenly watched contests will be in Mokama, where JD(U)’s Anant Singh, who is in jail in connection with the killing of a Jan Suraaj Party supporter during the election campaign, is locked in a straight battle with RJD’s Veena Devi, married to Suraj Bhan, a gangster.
In the Mahua seat, Tejashwi Yadav’s estranged elder brother Tej Pratap, who has floated his own outfit Janshakti Janata Dal, is locked in a multi-cornered contest. The elder son of RJD president Lalu Prasad seeks to wrest the seat from RJD MLA Mukesh Raushan, though the presence of Sanjay Singh, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) candidate who represents the NDA, and Independent Ashma Parveen, the runner-up of 2020, has queered the pitch.
Other seats and candidates whose performance will be keenly watched include young folk singer Maithili Thakur (BJP-Aliganj), Bhojpuri superstars Khesari Lal Yadav (RJD-Chhapra) and Ritesh Pandey (Jan Suraaj Party – Kargahar).
About a dozen ministers, most of them from the BJP, which has the lion’s share in the cabinet by virtue of its superior strength in the assembly, are in the fray. They are Nitin Nabin (Bankipur), Sanjay Saraogi (Darbhanga), Jibesh Kumar (Jale) and Kedar Prasad Gupta (Kurhani), all of whom will be defending their seats.
Ministers belonging to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), whose fate will be decided in the first phase, include Shrawan Kumar (Nalanda) and Vijay Kumar Chaudhary (Sarairanjan).
Voting will take place at 45,341 polling stations, an overwhelming majority of which (36,733) fall in rural areas.
