Bihar Assembly Elections 2025 | Last phase of campaign ends, voting for 122 seats on November 11

Patna: Campaigning for the second and last phase of election ended on Sunday evening. Voting for the remaining 122 seats are slated for Tuesday in which 3.7 crore eligible voters will exercise their franchise and decide the fate of 1,302 candidates in the fray.

With the NDA and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc engaged in a fierce and bitter battle, the top leaders in both the camps pulled out all the stops to woo the electorate till the last minute.

While Modi’s campaign ended on Saturday, Rahul Gandhi gave a last-minute push for his nominees at Kishanganj and Purnia on Sunday.

All eyes will now be on Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi whose daughter-in-law Deepa Manjhi has been fielded from naxal-infested Imamganj as the Hindustan Awam Morcha (HAM) candidate.

Another NDA ally Upendra Kushwaha’s wife Snehlata is in the fray from Sasaram constituency as the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) candidate. The fate of Bihar Congress president Rajesh Ram, who is contesting from his bastion Kutumba in Aurangabad, will also be decided on November 11.

High stakes

The stakes are high for the RJD whose 70 candidates are in the fray in the second and last phase of election, while the BJP has 52 nominees and JD (U) 45 candidates.

The Congress, which extracted its pound of flesh during seat-sharing talks, has 37 candidates in the fray in the last phase, mostly in the Muslim-dominated constituencies.

For the Tuesday poll, Makhdumpur (near Jehanabad) has the least number of voters (2,47,574), while Hisua in Nalanda has the maximum voters numbering 3,67,667.

The first phase of election for 121 seats took place on November 6 where a record 65.1 per cent voters turned out to vote. This was the first Assembly election being held after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was carried out by the Election Commission in Bihar where bogus voters were weeded out.

As a consequence, the eligible voters’ numbers came down from 7.9 crore to 7.4 crore. This was also one of the reasons for the high percentage of voters’ turnout in this part of the cow-belt.

Once the polling for the 122 seats, spread over 20 districts in Bihar, is over on November 11, counting for all the 243 constituencies will take place on November 14.