Category: election

Bihar Assembly election schedule to be announced today

**Bihar Assembly Election Schedule to Be Announced Today**

*By Chanshimla Varah | Oct 06, 2025, 10:23 AM*

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is set to announce the schedule for the Bihar Assembly elections today, Monday, during a press conference at 4:00 PM. With the term of the current 243-member Bihar Assembly ending on November 22, elections must be conducted before that date.

**Political Parties Advocate for Post-Chhath Polls**

Several political parties in Bihar are urging that the elections be held after the Chhath festival, which concludes in October. Their rationale is that scheduling polls post-festival would encourage greater voter participation, as many residents working outside the state return home during this time.

The previous Bihar Assembly elections in 2020 were conducted in three phases amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

**New Measures Announced for Voter List Revision**

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has introduced new initiatives to ensure a cleaner and more accurate voter list for the upcoming elections. A special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter rolls was conducted—the first after 22 years, with the last revision taking place in 2003.

These measures will be implemented nationwide and include a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) guaranteeing that Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) are delivered to voters within 15 days of registration. Additionally, a mobile deposit facility will be available at polling booths to streamline the voting process.

**ECI Reviews Election Preparedness with Bihar Visit**

The announcement follows a recent two-day visit by an ECI delegation to Bihar to assess poll readiness. The team was led by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and included Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.

The upcoming Bihar elections are expected to witness a keen contest between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal United (JDU) alliance and the opposition Mahagathbandhan, headed by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress.
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/politics/bihar-assembly-election-schedule-to-be-announced-today/story

Party’s response on EC final voter list soon: Chakravarty

**Congress to Issue Detailed Feedback on Bihar Voter List Amid Data Format Challenges**

NEW DELHI: Days after the Election Commission of India (EC) published the final voter list for the upcoming Bihar polls, the Congress party has announced that it will soon release a detailed feedback report. The task involves an arduous effort to download and analyze over 90,000 PDF files containing the voter list.

Praveen Chakravarty, Chairman of the AICC Data Analytics Department, informed this newspaper that the party’s data analytics team, along with EAGLE—the committee set up to monitor elections—has been rigorously working on the data.

“The final voter list is available only in PDF format, and unfortunately, these are scanned images rather than machine-readable digital text. The entire list runs into more than 90,000 pages. We have managed to download the PDFs, and the rest of the work remains,” Chakravarty said.

Opposition parties, including Congress, have criticized the Election Commission’s decision to replace the machine-readable draft voter lists with scanned image PDFs during this intensive revision exercise. Congress has been demanding access to the voter list in a machine-readable format, arguing that it would help identify and flag discrepancies more effectively.

However, citing a 2019 Supreme Court judgment, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar stated that the voter list in machine-readable format cannot be shared with political parties due to concerns that it could be edited and misused.

The final voter list shows a reduction of nearly 47 lakh electors, bringing the total number down to 7.42 crore from 7.89 crore after the special intensive review of electoral rolls.

In response, CPI (ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said on Friday that the Opposition may approach the Supreme Court if the Election Commission fails to address the alleged discrepancies in the final voter list.
https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2025/Oct/04/partys-response-on-ec-final-voter-list-soon-chakravarty

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