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New Delhi, November 6 (IANS) The first phase of Bihar Assembly elections 2025 will be held on Thursday, in which voting will be held for 121 constituencies in 18 districts.
Over 3.75 crore voters are eligible to decide the fate of 1,314 candidates, including 122 women contenders. Voting will begin at 7 am and continue till 6 pm, however, due to security reasons in select sensitive areas like Simri Bakhtiyarpur, Mahishi, Tarapur, Munger, Jamalpur and parts of Suryagarh, polling will end at 5 pm.
Voting is taking place across 45,324 booths, all of which are being 100 per cent webcast for real-time monitoring.
To ensure free, fair and transparent elections, the Election Commission has deployed 121 general observers, 18 police observers and 33 expenditure observers. A special control room has also been set up at the Chief Electoral Officer office in Patna, where voters can lodge complaints through the helpline and email.
Security has been tightened at all polling stations with the deployment of state police and central armed paramilitary forces. To promote inclusivity, 926 fully women-managed booths and 107 Divyang (differently-abled) managed booths have been set up. Apart from this, 320 model booths have been built to provide better facilities to the voters.
Among the key districts going to the polls today are Patna, Vaishali, Nalanda, Bhojpur, Munger, Saran, Siwan, Gopalganj, and Muzaffarpur.
From the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), JD (U) is contesting on 57 seats, BJP on 48, LJP (Ram Vilas) on 14 and Rashtriya Lok Morcha on 2 seats.
In the grand alliance, RJD is contesting on 73 seats, Congress on 24 and CPI (ML) on 14 seats. Other parties in the fray include Vikassheel Insaan Party with 5 candidates and CPI and CPM with 3 candidates each.
The newly formed Indian Inclusive Party (IIP) is contesting on 3 seats, while the Jan Suraj Party has fielded 119 candidates.
In this phase, the political fate of many prominent leaders including Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha will be decided. 16 ministers of the state are also in the fray. Grand alliance’s chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav is contesting from Raghopur seat for the third time.
–IANS
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