Patna: Polling agents with EVM machines and other election equipment leave from a boat for their respective polling stations on the eve of the first phase of the Bihar elections, Wednesday in Patna | Photo credit: ANI
Voting started at 7am and will last until 5pm.
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 Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and BJP’s Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged voters to cast their votes with full enthusiasm.
“Today marks the first phase of 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, vote first, drink later!”
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh also urged voters to exercise their franchise in the “celebration of democracy” and congratulated the young voters who cast their votes for the first time.
Yadav appealed to voters to participate in the voting process and said, “Voting is crucial in the interest of democracy, the Constitution and humanity.”
The RJD candidate is aiming for a hat-trick in the Raghopur seat, while his main challenger, the BJP’s Satish Kumar, had defeated his mother Rabri Devi in a contest on a JD(U) symbol in 2010.
Choudhary, who is enjoying his second consecutive term in the Legislative Council, is contesting direct elections from Tarapur after about a decade. The former state BJP president is facing a stiff challenge from RJD’s Arun Kumar Sah, who had lost the seat in 2020 by a margin of around 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, overcoming the not-so-formidable challenge from Congress’s Amresh Kumar and Jan Suraaj Party’s Suraj Kumar.
Mangal Pandey, a minister and former BJP president, is joining the fray from Siwan, the first example of his fight against assembly elections.
Pandey, who has been an MLC since 2012, faces a formidable opponent in RJD’s Awadh Bihari Chaudhary, a former Speaker of Parliament who has been an MLA for several terms.
The neighboring seat of Raghunathpur is being closely watched for Osama Shahab, the 31-year-old son of late gangster and politician Mohd Shahabuddin, a multi-term MP from Siwan known as the ‘uncrowned king’ of the area.
Osama’s candidacy has been adopted by the NDA, which has cited it as evidence that the RJD stood for ‘return of jungle raj’, and BJP leaders such as Himanta Biswa Sarma have even pointed out that the name was reminiscent of slain terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
One of the most watched matches will take place 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 been running his own outfit Janshakti Janata Dal, is locked in an all-round contest.
The eldest son of RJD president Lalu Prasad is trying to wrest the seat from RJD MLA Mukesh Raushan, though the presence of Sanjay Singh, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) candidate representing the NDA, and independent Ashma Parveen, the 2020 runner-up, has thrown the field into disarray.
Other seats and candidates whose performances will be closely 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 of the Cabinet due to its superior strength in the assembly, are locked 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 in 45,341 polling stations, the overwhelming majority (36,733) of which are in rural areas.
Published on November 6, 2025
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