Filing of nomination papers ended on Monday (October 20, 2025) for the second and final phase of Bihar Assembly polls, with the opposition INDIA bloc appearing fractured, as constituents would end up fighting each other in a number of seats.

According to the Election Commission of India, altogether 1,314 candidates have been left in the fray for the first phase in which 121 constituencies of the 243-strong Assembly would go to polls on November 6, following the withdrawal of 61 nominees, besides rejection of more than 300 during scrutiny.

The RJD, which helms the Opposition coalition, and prides itself on having emerged as the single-largest party in the past couple of Assembly elections, came out with a list of its 143 candidates, much after most of them had already been allotted symbols and filed nomination papers.

The party avoided a confrontation with the Congress, refraining from fielding a candidate in reserved constituency of Kutumba against BPCC president Rajesh Kumar Ram, though its candidates would end up fighting against nominees of the grand old party in Lalganj, Vaishali and Kahalgaon.

Earlier, the RJD had also seemed poised for a fight with former State Minister Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insaan Party in Tarapur, where the NDA has fielded BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, and Gaura Boram.

However, in Tarapur, the VIP announced that it would not back its candidate Sakaldeo Bind, who then withdrew his nomination papers in indignation and joined the BJP in presence of Mr. Choudhary.

In Gaura Boram, a letter from RJD president Lalu Prasad to the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar, informing that his party was backing Sahni’s younger brother Santosh, and that the person “turning up with our poll symbol, the lantern, not be considered for nomination” proved to be of no avail.

Afzal Ali, who had filed the nomination papers on the RJD symbol, refused to back down and the party cadre was now confronted with a confusing situation in the constituency falling in Darbhanga district.

The RJD also faces rebellion in Parihar, where Ritu Jaiswal, the party’s women’s wing chief filed her nomination papers as an Independent, upset over the ticket going to daughter-in-law of former State president Ram Chandra Purve, whom she has been suspecting of having played a role in her defeat in the last Assembly polls, when she lost by a thin margin.

Infighting in the INDIA bloc would also be witnessed in Bachhwara, Rajapakar and Rosera, with Congress and CPI fielding their candidates in all the three seats. Rajapakar is currently held by the Congress which has let sitting MLA Pratima Kumari Das defend her seat.

The Congress is contesting altogether 61 seats, five less than the number it had contested in 2020, when it had won only 19 and the dismal strike rate was blamed for the inability of Mahagathbandhan to win a majority.

The momentum gained by Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra notwithstanding, the party is having to contend with intense dissidence as state leaders are questioning the criterion adopted for giving tickets, with many candidates who lost by huge margins five years getting another chance but those who gave a tough fight to the NDA have been overlooked.

A point of discord has also been the clout enjoyed by Pappu Yadav, the Independent MP from Purnea, married to Ranjeet Ranjan, a Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Chhattisgarh, whose loyalists have been given tickets in place of sitting MLAs, or they have been fielded from seats where the party did not have a strong chance of winning.

Vikassheel Insaan Party, which has no MLA in the outgoing Assembly, had aggressively demanded ’40-50 seats’, besides the assurance that Mukesh Sahni would be the ‘Deputy Chief Minister’ if Tejashwi Yadav headed the next government, but they did a major climbdown and settled for 16 constituencies.

The CPI(ML) Liberation, which had the best strike rate in the Mahagathbandhan in 2020, when it contested 19 and won 12, decided against being too ambitious and is contesting only 20 seats.

The CPI, which has two MLAs, is contesting nine seats, the party’s office secretary Indu Bhushan Verma said.

CPI(M) Bihar state secretariat member Manoj Chandravanshi said his party, which also has two MLAs, would be contesting four seats.

The last date of filing of nomination papers had its own share of drama.

The RJD candidate from Sasaram, Satyendra Sah, was arrested shortly after filing of nomination papers, by a team of Jharkhand Police in connection with a case pending against him in the adjoining state.

It was the third instance of its kind involving candidates of INDIA bloc.

Earlier, last week, CPI(ML) Liberation candidates Jitendra Paswan and Satyadeo Ram were arrested shortly after filing nomination papers from Bhore and Darauli respectively.

The Left party had alleged that these arrests were “politically motivated” and a sign of “fear and panic” in the NDA camp which has been ruling Bihar for 20 years and was now facing anti-incumbency.

Published – October 20, 2025 10:21 pm IST

CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya on Monday (October 13, 2025) said that decks have been cleared for the party to contest at least 18 seats in the Bihar polls, while negotiations were underway for a few more constituencies.

Mr. Bhattacharya said that the party, which is a constituent of the Opposition Mahagathbandhan, will begin filing nominations from Tuesday (October 14, 2025), even as the Grand Alliance is yet to make a formal announcement about seat sharing.

Bihar election LIVE

He also slammed the voter roll deletions under the Election Commission’s special intensive revision (SIR) as an “electoral purge masquerading as verification”.

The Left outfit, which emerged as a key player in the 2020 polls by winning 12 of the 19 seats it contested, this time had sought around 40 seats.

Mr. Bhattacharya, in an interview with PTI, said that seat-sharing discussions with allies in the Grand Alliance have been finalised for 18 of the 19 constituencies it had fought last time, while talks are underway for a few more.

He said the party’s campaign machinery has already been mobilised across rural Bihar.

The CPI(ML) Liberation is a crucial part of the Grand Alliance, which also includes the RJD, Congress, CPI, CPI(M) and Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).

Even as the ruling NDA has already sealed its seat sharing formula, the opposition camp remains locked in negotiations. The RJD and Congress are still ironing out their understanding in Delhi, delaying the final announcement of seat distribution.

“The RJD and Congress are finalising their understanding in Delhi. I don’t know the outcome yet,” Bhattacharya said, refraining from commenting on whether the delay would prove disadvantageous.

He had earlier told PTI last month that he hoped the Congress would be more realistic while the RJD more accommodative of its smaller allies during the Bihar seat-sharing talks.

The nomination process for the first phase of polling ends on October 17, and the Left outfit has already set its campaign in motion, focusing on livelihood issues, unemployment, price rise and SIR, which Mr. Bhattacharya termed the “systematic disenfranchisement of the poor.” While finalising seat sharing, the Opposition has also been grappling with the controversy over mass voter deletions in Bihar under SIR, an issue that it has placed at the heart of its campaign.

Rejecting speculations that the Grand Alliance had earlier considered boycotting the polls in protest against alleged large-scale disenfranchisement, Bhattacharya said such an option was “never on the table” as it would “facilitate exclusion instead of fighting it”.

“Boycott was never an option because that would mean walking out of democracy when democracy itself is under attack,” Mr. Bhattacharya said.

“When the entire issue is about exclusion, boycotting the election would only mean voluntarily excluding ourselves. The fight is against exclusion, not to facilitate it,” he said.

His remarks come in the backdrop of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s July statement that the Grand Alliance might “consider boycott” the elections if the deletions were not rectified.

“Some individuals might have made emotional remarks when fears of mass disenfranchisement were at their peak, when nearly two crore voters seemed at risk, but as a party, we never considered boycotting,” he said.

Calling the SIR an “electoral purge masquerading as verification,” Mr. Bhattacharya alleged that the deletion of lakhs of names amounted to a “body blow to democracy and citizens’ right to vote”.

“This is not verification, this is exclusion. It’s a warning sign for the future of India’s democracy. A democracy cannot survive such a massive and opaque cleansing of voters. SIR is an attack on the Constitution itself,” he said.

The EC’s final electoral roll for Bihar, published on September 30, listed 7.42 crore voters, a drop of more than 47 lakh since the SIR began in June. Mr. Bhattacharya accused the EC of “abdicating its constitutional responsibility” and outsourcing the burden of correction to voters and political parties.

“The EC’s job is to ensure a fair and accurate roll. Instead, it has made the process so complicated that ordinary citizens, especially the poor and migrant workers, are unable to navigate it. The burden has been shifted from the institution to the individual,” he said.

The CPI(ML) Liberation leader said the deletions reflected a social pattern of exclusion, disproportionately affecting vulnerable sections.

“Women, the poor, migrant workers, Dalits and possibly Muslims have been most affected,” he said.

“The top three districts with the highest deletions are Gopalganj, Kishanganj and Purnia — two of them Muslim-majority. In Dalit-dominated areas too, large numbers of names have disappeared. These are not random technical errors; these are social patterns of exclusion,” Mr. Bhattacharya added.

He added that reports of around 6,000 voters being deleted on grounds of ‘doubtful citizenship’ raised serious questions about the intent of the exercise.

“If true, this is alarming. Between 2016 and 2019, the law minister told Parliament there were only three such cases across India, none in Bihar. So how did we suddenly jump to 6,000?” he asked.

He said the SIR controversy went beyond Bihar.

“If this SIR model is extended to other States, it will become a national method of disenfranchisement. This is not an administrative update; it’s a political experiment in exclusion,” he warned.

Published – October 13, 2025 11:07 am IST

Former Union Minister Ramchandra Prasad Singh announces new political party Aap Saabki Aawaz at a press conference, in Patna on October 31, 2024
| Photo Credit: ANI

Former Union Minister R.C.P. Singh, who had to quit his cabinet berth after falling out of favour with JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar, on Thursday (October 31, 2024) floated a new party, Aap Saabki Aawaz.

Talking to reporters here on the occasion, Mr. Singh said he chose the day for the launch as besides Deepavali, it was also the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel.

Incidentally, Patel is seen as a cultural icon by the powerful OBC community Kurmi, to which both Mr. Kumar and Mr. Singh belong, and the latter profusely thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for celebrating the birth anniversary on a grand scale.

Mr. Singh, the bureaucrat-turned-politician, did not take any question and did not speak of his relations with the JD(U), which he had once headed but left in disgrace, and the BJP, which he joined a year ago, only to remain sidelined.

He, however, made it clear that his party was looking forward to contesting the Bihar assembly polls due next year and already had prospective candidates for “140 out of 243 seats”.

Mr. Singh indirectly targeted Mr. Kumar by attacking the much-touted prohibition law in the State and highlighting the deterioration in government education institutions, “a far cry from our student days when we could crack the civil services, without reservation facility and with no coaching”.

Hailing from the same Nalanda district as the Bihar Chief Minister, Mr. Singh was an Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer, and on central deputation, he first came in contact with Mr. Kumar, then the railway minister.

After assuming power in Bihar in 2005, Mr. Kumar, who was visibly impressed with the administrative acumen of Mr. Singh, persuaded the latter to come to Bihar as his principal secretary.

In 2010, Mr. Singh took voluntary retirement and joined JD(U) which helped him enjoy two consecutive terms in the Rajya Sabha.

However, in 2021, his induction into the Narendra Modi cabinet did not go down well with Mr. Kumar, who had by then grown suspicious that his protégé was planning a sabotage.

Mr. Singh was made to step down as national president of JD(U) within months of becoming the party president, and denial of another Rajya Sabha term a year later caused him to give up the ministerial berth.

By that time JD(U) rank and file was agog with rumours that Mr. Singh was plotting a split at the BJP’s instance and served with a show cause notice over allegations of financial misappropriations that caused him to quit the party.

A year later, he joined the BJP which had by that time been dumped by Mr. Kumar who chose to realign a year later.

Later, Mr. Kumar’s JD(U) emerged as a crucial ally of the BJP which is now short of a majority in Lok Sabha.

Patna:

Former Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey said on Thursday that the post of Bihar BJP President should be given to a leader who originally belongs to the party.

Without naming Bihar BJP chief Samrat Chaudhary, Mr Choubey said, “BJP was nurtured by Syama Prasad Mukherjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. We can never forget their principles. It is important to have an original member of the party in the post of state President. I firmly believe that the post of party chief, be it at the district, state, or central level, should be occupied by a member of the party organisation.”

It needs to be mentioned here that before joining the BJP, Samrat Choudhary was associated with both the RJD and JD(U).

Mr Choubey also said that the BJP should contest the Assembly in Bihar scheduled in 2025 on its own.

“It is my wish and I have informed the party about the same. An NDA government should be formed in Bihar under the leadership of the BJP. Every party worker must start working on this line from now onwards,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)