Bihar: State Assembly Election Will Be Held In Three Phases, Voting On 28 October, 3 November and 7 November.

Karishma Jha

New Delhi/Patna, September 25, 2020: The 2020 Bihar State Assembly election has been announced, the election will be in three stages. The first phase of voting will be held on October 28. The second phase will be voted on November 3 and the third phase on November 7. The election results will be declared on 10th November.

Voting will be done in 16 districts and 71 seats in the first phase. In the second phase, elections will be held for 94 seats in 17 districts. In the third phase, there will be 78 seats in 15 districts. The first phase notification will be issued on 1 October. The last date of nomination is 8 October.

The Chief Election Commissioner said that the use of social media during elections is also a challenge. If anyone tries to create tension in the society on social media, then legal action will be taken. All polling stations will be on the ground floor. Information about the candidates has to be given on the website. Criminal cases against candidates will be made public.

In Bihar assembly elections, more than seven crore voters will be able to cast their votes. Nominations for Bihar assembly elections can be filed online and offline. Voting will be held from 7 am to 6 pm. The voting time has been extended by one hour. Nomination can also be done online. Only five people, including the assembly candidate, will join the door to door campaign. No more than 5 people will be able to campaign at homes. Elections will be held under new security standards due to Coronavirus disease (COVID19) pandemic.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said that elections will be held under the new security standards due to COVID. The number of voters will be reduced at the polling booth. There will be one thousand voters at one booth. Seven lakh hand sanitizers, six lakh PPE kits, 7-6 lakh bedsheets, 23 lakh hand gloves have been arranged. More than seven lakh hand sanitizers and over 46 lakh masks will be made available.

A total of 243 seats are to be contested in Bihar. This is the first major election going to take place in the Corona era. The election is the democratic right of citizens. Therefore, it is necessary to hold elections. There will be more than one lakh polling stations in Bihar elections this time.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear the petition seeking the postponement of the Assembly elections in Bihar. The petitioner cited the worsening situation in the state due to Coronavirus. The court said, “We have already made it clear that the Election Commission is capable of taking decisions keeping all the things in mind as per the situation.”

The Election Commission earlier made it clear that assembly elections in Bihar will be held before November 29. Along with the elections to the Bihar Assembly, there will be by-elections in 65 seats. One Lok Sabha and 64 assembly seats in the country are vacant. An announcement by the Election Commission can be done today on these by-elections.

The Election Commission decided that by-elections should be held on the vacant seats along with the assembly elections. According to the commission, the new legislative body in Bihar is to be constituted before November 29, so accordingly assembly elections are to be completed. In such a situation, the by-elections on vacant seats will also be held along with the Bihar Legislative Assembly.

Bihar Assembly has a total of 243 assembly seats. At present, the alliance of Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Janta Dal (United) is in power. The Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) is the largest party in Bihar with 73 seats. But Nitish Kumar’s JDU broke the alliance with the RJD in 2017 and formed a government with the BJP.

Once again, the electoral battle in Bihar is to be fought between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan). It has been announced by BJP that NDA will contest elections under the leadership of Nitish Kumar.

At present NDA has 130 seats
• JDU – 69
• BJP – 54
• LJP – 2
• HAM- 1
• Independents – 4

Grand Alliance (total seats 101)
• RJD – ​​73
• Congress – 23
• CPI (ML) – 3 •

Independents – 1 other
1. AIMIM – 1
2. Vacant seats – 12