Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar flanked by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu (L) and Vivek Joshi.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Patna: The three-member Election Commission, led by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, is likely to visit Bihar on October 4 to take stock of the preparedness for the elections to the 243 Assembly constituencies in the State.
The term of the present Bihar Assembly expires on November 22.
It is expected that once the Election Commission team winds up its two-day Bihar visit on October 5, the poll body will soon announce the much-awaited election schedule, keeping in mind the festive season of Deepavali and Chhath, which ends in the last week of October.
The Election Commission recently held confabulations with the District Magistrates (DMs) and the Superintendents of Police of the 38 districts in Bihar and took stock of the poll preparedness in view of the extended monsoon/rains and the ongoing festivals.
This will be the first Election Commission visit to the poll-bound State after the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls was carried out in July. The final voters’ list, released on September 30, shows Bihar has 7.42 crore voters, instead of the earlier 7.9 crore voters.
The Opposition, which has alleged that the SIR was an exercise of mass disenfranchisement, may meet the Election Commission team, which will also have the other two Election Commissioners — Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi — to put across its protest.
The Election Commission has, meanwhile, decided to deploy 470 officers as observers for the ensuing Assembly polls in Bihar. This includes 320 IAS officers, 60 IPS and 90 officers from other services.
It is customary for the Election Commission to deploy observers in basically three streams: general, police and expenditure, where these observers act as eyes and ears of the Election Commission and are perceived to be watchdogs of the poll body. A briefing of these observers is likely on October 3.
In 2020, Assembly elections were conducted in Bihar in three phases. Bihar was then the first State where elections were held after the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2025, Bihar will be the first State where elections will be carried out after an SIR exercise.