Bihar election phase 1: 121 seats at stake; Key Constituencies, Top Candidates india news

New Delhi: Voting for the first phase of Bihar Assembly elections 2025 began on Thursday morning in 121 constituencies across 18 districts, with over 3.75 crore eligible voters casting their votes. Voting began at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm, although due to security concerns the voting time has been reduced to 5 pm in some constituencies.This phase will decide the political fate of many prominent leaders including RJD’s Tejashwi Prasad Yadav. BJPSamrat Chaudhary and Mangal Pandey, and JDU’s Shravan Kumar and Vijay Kumar Chaudhary. Tej Pratap Yadav Are also contesting elections in this period.According to the Election Commission, there are 10.72 lakh new voters in the constituencies with a combined population of 6.60 crore, including 7.78 lakh in the 18-19 age group. Before the day of polling the presiding officers handed over the electronic voting machines to the polling agents.Tejashwi YadavThe Grand Alliance’s chief ministerial candidate is contesting from Raghopur, a seat he has held since 2015. He faces BJP’s Satish Kumar Yadav, who lost in 2020. His brother, Tej Pratap Yadav, who formed the Janashakti Janata Dal after leaving the RJD, has fielded Prem Kumar from Raghopur, while himself is contesting from Mahua. Prashant Kishore led Jan Suraj Party has fielded Chanchal Singh, leading to a triangular contest in Raghopur.

Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Samrat Chaudhary is contesting against RJD’s Arun Kumar and Jan Suraj’s Santosh Kumar Singh in Munger’s Tarapur seat. Deputy CM Vijay Kumar Sinha is contesting from Lakhisarai against Congress’s Amresh Kumar and Jan Suraj’s Suraj Kumar.In Mokama constituency, which is in the news after the murder of Dularchand Yadav, JDU candidate Anant Kumar Singh, arrested in the case, will face Veena Devi, wife of former MP Surajbhan Singh.In Patna Sahib, traditionally a BJP stronghold, the contest is between BJP’s Ratnesh Kumar, also known as Ratnesh Khushwaha, and Congress’s Shashant Shekhar.Darbhanga has caught the BJP’s attention by fielding 25-year-old folk singer Maithili Thakur against RJD’s Binod Mishra. Thakur, the youngest candidate in the fray, can become the youngest MLA of Bihar if elected.A total of 122 women candidates are contesting in this phase. Jan Suraj Party has fielded 119 candidates. Within the NDA, JDU is contesting on 57 seats, BJP on 48 seats and LJP (Ram Vilas) on 14 seats. Among the grand alliance partners, RJD is contesting on 73 seats, Congress on 24 seats and CPI (ML) on 14 seats, while there is friendly competition on some seats.Voting was held in three phases in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections. The NDA won 125 seats, while the grand alliance got 110 seats. JD(U) got 43 seats, BJP 74, RJD 75 and Congress 19 seats.

Raghopur

It briefly promised a great showdown after Prashant Kishor teased a possible showdown with Tejashwi before finally walking out. But this stronghold of the Lalu Prasad family remains one of the most watched seats in Bihar as Tejashwi is eyeing a hat-trick this time. The son of Lalu, the CM face of the opposition alliance, is a strong man on this seat in Vaishali (Hajipur) district dominated by Yadavs. But the prestige seat tag did not translate into significant development for Raghopur. Its long-awaited all-weather connectivity with Patna became a reality this June, when CM Nitish Kumar opened the six-lane Kachchi Dargah-Bidupur bridge, part of the long Vaishali-Patna road. With no PK in the picture here, Tejashwi’s main rival is the man he defeated in 2015 and 2020, Satish Kumar. Now in BJP, he won this seat for JDU in 2010 by defeating Tejashwi’s mother and former Bihar CM Rabri Devi.

Alinagar

On this seat of Darbhanga district, a political strongman is competing with a contender who is trying his luck. But if Maithili Thakur can rely on her celebrity status as a singer and internet sensation in her first electoral contest for the BJP, RJD’s Binod Mishra (63) will be hoping that the mathematics work in his favor this time as the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), the party against which he lost here in 2020, is now a grand alliance partner. This seat in the Mithila region, which has 25% Brahmin and 23% Muslim voters, is an important polling booth and Thakur has promised to change its name if he wins. His alleged display of disrespect for Mithila’s cultural symbol, the ‘paag’ or cap, sparked controversy. She has also been labeled an outsider, but she would like to carry forward Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s appeal for an ‘overwhelming majority’ for her, calling her the ‘daughter of Mithila’.

Chhapra

Bhojpuri star Khesri Lal Yadav – his real name is Shatrughan Yadav – is attracting attention on his electoral debut, although BJP’s Chhoti Kumari is fanning her chances in this seat, where her party has won three times in a row since 2010, except for the 2014 bypoll, when the RJD had won. Saran district, of which Chapra is a part, has given birth to both national and Bhojpuri icons such as Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and Bhikhari Thakur, known as the ‘Shakespeare of the Bhojpuri language’. Indeed, Khesari has stepped up his campaigning as RJD chief Tejashwi Yadav and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav have organized rallies for him, but the BJP’s own brigade of Bhojpuri stars – Ravi Kishan and Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ – have tried to blunt his appeal.

Sarhasa

The seat has not gone to the BJP in only one election since 2005 and the party has nominated incumbent Jha to regain it. He faces two newcomers – election strategist Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraj Party and the Indian Inclusive Party, whose founder Inderjit Prasad Gupta is the challenger here. Gupta is said to have organized a massive rally with his supporters from Paan and Tanti caste groups at Gandhi Maidan in Patna, which attracted the attention of the Grand Alliance’s chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav and the IIP was included in the Grand Alliance. But there are no easy predictions about the outcome here: If Jha secured more than a lakh votes for his victory in 2020, he saw rival RJD garner a similarly resounding mandate in 2015, when it was losing.

Madhepura

If the Lok Sabha seat of the same name is associated with Yadav stalwarts like RJD founder Lalu Prasad and JDU’s Sharad Yadav, that assembly constituency has a record of never going with candidates from any other community. For challenger Saha, it is a three-pronged task: becoming the first non-Yadav and woman to win the seat and finding a way to deny Chandra Shekhar a fourth consecutive victory. Underscoring the importance of this district, both CM Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav have campaigned for their party candidates. Yadavs constitute about 32% of the population and Muslims about 11% and SC community about 17.5%. The remaining 40% are from extremely backward caste (EBC) and ‘Pachpaniya’ groups, who are largely tilted in favor of Nitish.

Tarapur

This seat in Munger district came into limelight when despite JDU winning since 2010, CM Nitish Kumar handed it over to Deputy CM and BJP leader Samrat Chaudhary. He may have ousted the most famous face of the saffron camp in Bihar in the socialist bastion, but the move revives a family connection for Choudhary, whose father Shakuni Choudhary has represented Tarapur three times, while his mother Parvati also won it in the 1998 bypoll. Choudhary is contesting against RJD’s Arun Kumar Sah in this agricultural constituency, which has never elected a BJP MLA. Tarapur has a history of staunch protests. Its natural beauty inspired the poet Henry Derozio and the painter Nandlal Bose, who was born nearby. During the Civil Disobedience Movement of the 1930s, 32 protesters died here in police firing and later, in 1946, there were ‘Partition Riots’ in Tarapur.

Mokama

There is a tense situation in Mokama after the recent murder of RJD supporter Dularchand Yadav allegedly by associates of JDU candidate and strongman leader Anant Singh during the election campaign, which led to Singh’s arrest. This is being seen here as putting the NDA on the back foot, which is targeting the opposition by reminding it of Lalu Prasad’s ‘Jungle Raj’. Located on the eastern edge of Patna district, Mokama is at a rapid pace of development – ​​it is connected to North Bihar and Howrah through Rajendra Setu, the state’s first rail-cum-road bridge, and hosts an NTPC plant, while a four-lane road bridge was recently inaugurated by PM Modi. The seat is dominated by Singh’s family – his wife and brother Dilip hold the seat, while Singh himself has won it five times, including in 2020, but from the RJD camp. He has now changed sides.

siwan

RJD’s Chaudhary, former speaker of the Bihar Assembly, is a six-time MLA from this seat, while the BJP and its earlier incarnation Jan Sangh have also performed well here. Siwan district is equally remembered at the national level for being the birthplace of India’s first President Babu Rajendra Prasad and the constituency of powerful leader and local MP the late Mohammad Shahabuddin. Under Shahabuddin’s leadership, Siwan was seen as an RJD stronghold, and Chaudhary may be hoping to exploit old loyalties. In front of him is BJP MLC and Bihar Health and Family Welfare Minister Pandey, who is making his electoral debut. In this seat which has a significant presence of Muslim voters, the presence of AIMIM’s Kafi Shamsheer and Jan Suraj Party’s Intekhan Ahmed makes the contest complicated.