Final Bihar voter list to be published today; poll announcement likely next week

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is poised to publish the final electoral roll for Bihar on Tuesday, paving the way for the formal announcement of the Assembly election schedule in the coming days. The ECI top brass will be in Patna on 4 and 5 October to review preparedness, with sources indicating that the poll dates are likely to be declared next week.

With the term of the 243-member Bihar Assembly ending on 22 November, the elections are expected to be held in phases beginning shortly after the Chhath festival in late October. A briefing of general, police and expenditure observers has been fixed for 3 October, and the ECI has confirmed the deployment of 470 observers across Bihar as well as for some Assembly bypolls.

This year’s exercise has attracted unusual attention as the electoral rolls underwent a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) for the first time in 22 years. Draft rolls published on 1 August listed 7.24 crore electors and remained open for claims and objections until 1 September.

Opposition parties have sharply criticised the SIR, alleging that the process could disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters. The Commission has countered these charges, insisting it would not allow any eligible citizen to be excluded or any ineligible name to remain on the rolls.

Against this backdrop, the political contest in Bihar is already heating up. Union home minister Amit Shah, campaigning in Araria on Saturday, urged voters to deliver a resounding verdict for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). “I promise you that each and every infiltrator will be driven out of Bihar if the NDA wins with a two-third majority, with a tally of 160-plus seats,” he declared.

Shah accused the Opposition, particularly Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and RJD president Lalu Prasad, of seeking to “secure voting rights for infiltrators”.

Shah reminded party workers that while the NDA had performed strongly in the last Assembly polls, the bar had now been raised. “You must strive to do better this time. Only then can the target of 160-plus be achieved,” he said.

The comments prompted a sharp response from the Congress. Party general-secretary Jairam Ramesh took to X on Monday to mock Shah’s confidence. “In education, VC stands for Vice Chancellor; in the world of start-ups, VC stands for Venture Capital; in the military, VC is Vir Chakra. But now there is a new kind of VC that is defining our politics — vote chori (vote theft),” he wrote.

“And the sutradhar (director) has already unveiled the target for VC in Bihar. The Union Home Minister has confidently declared that the NDA will get more than 160 seats out of 243,” Ramesh added.

Accusing the BJP of relying on both “VC (vote chori) plus VR (vote revdi, or vote doles)” to push its way to power, Ramesh asserted that “the politically most conscious people of Bihar will defeat these machinations.” He went on to predict: “It will be the Mahagatbandhan in Bihar. And the first place the tremor will be felt is in New Delhi.”

With both the ruling alliance and the Opposition already sharpening their lines of attack, Bihar’s election season is set to unfold as one of the most fiercely contested battles in recent memory — fought over not just seats, but the very credibility of the electoral process.

With PTI inputs