
The Bihar Assembly Election phase-I is underway in 243 seats of 71 assembly constituencies in 16 districts. More than 2 crore voters in Bihar will decide the fate of 1,066 candidates today. The voting began at 7 AM early in the morning and the turnout has been recorded at 18.3 percent till 11:30 am. 4 hours have been passed since the polling started, it will be interesting to see the voter turnout at the end of the day which was 56.8% (the highest voter turnout in Bihar assembly polls since 2000) in the previous election held in 2015.
The Bihar Assembly Elections is holding a tough contest between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) And Mahagathbandhan. NDA is the ruling alliance that includes JD-U (contesting 115 seats), BJP (110 seats), Vikassheel Insaan Party (11 seats), and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (7 seats), while Mahagathbandhan, which picked Tejashwi Yadav as a chief ministerial candidate, constitutes RJD (144 seats) and the Congress with 70 seats. Other alliance partners include the CPI-ML (19 seats), CPI (6 seats), and the CPIM (4 seats).
However, the Grand Democratic Secular Front led by Mayawati’s BSP includes Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and Upendra Khushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) two other parties.
The agenda of the election for the Mahagathbandhan is education, health, jobs, and development for Bihar, and the CM candidate Tejashwi Yadav has promised 10 lakh jobs appealing to voters to vote in favor of Mahagathbandhan.
While the ruling alliance of NDA led by CM Nitish Kumar is seeking votes for the work and development of Bihar Under his leadership.