Bihar elections phase 1: 121 seats at stake; key constituencies, top candidates

NEW DELHI: Polling for the first phase of the Bihar Assembly elections 2025 began on Thursday morning across 121 constituencies in 18 districts, with over 3.75 crore eligible voters set to cast their ballots. Voting started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm, though polling time has been curtailed to 5 pm in some constituencies due to security concerns.

This phase will decide the political fate of several prominent leaders, including RJD’s Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, BJP ’s Samrat Choudhary and Mangal Pandey, and JD(U)’s Shravan Kumar and Vijay Kumar Choudhary . Tej Pratap Yadav is also contesting in this round.



According to the Election Commission, there are 10.72 lakh new voters, including 7.78 lakh in the 18–19 age group, across constituencies with a combined population of 6.60 crore. Presiding officers handed over Electronic Voting Machines to polling agents ahead of voting day.

Tejashwi Yadav , Mahagathbandhan’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 Janshakti Janta Dal after quitting RJD, has fielded Prem Kumar from Raghopur while contesting himself from Mahua. The Jan Suraaj Party, led by Prashant Kishor, has fielded Chanchal Singh, making Raghopur a three-cornered contest.



Also read: ‘Vote first, refreshments later’ says PM Modi to Bihar voters


Key constituencies and candidates

1. Raghopur (Vaishali district)

• Tejashwi Prasad Yadav – RJD, Mahagathbandhan’s CM face (incumbent MLA, seeking third term)
• Satish Kumar Yadav – BJP (lost to Tejashwi in 2020)
• Prem Kumar – Janshakti Janta Dal (fielded by Tej Pratap Yadav’s party)
• Chanchal Singh – Jan Suraaj Party (Prashant Kishor’s outfit)

2. Alinagar (Darbhanga district)

• Maithili Thakur – BJP (singer and first-time contestant)
• Binod Mishra (63) – RJD (former candidate, hoping for comeback)

3. Chhapra (Saran district)

• Khesari Lal Yadav (Shatrughan Yadav) – RJD (Bhojpuri actor making poll debut)
• Chhoti Kumari – BJP (party has held seat thrice since 2010)

4. Saharsa

• Alok Ranjan Jha – BJP (incumbent MLA, seeking re-election)
• Indrajeet Prasad Gupta – Indian Inclusive Party (new entrant, recently joined Mahagathbandhan)
• Jan Suraaj Party candidate – Challenger from Prashant Kishor’s outfit (name not specified)

5. Madhepura

• Chandra Shekhar – RJD (three-time MLA, aiming for fourth term)
• Saha – Challenger (trying to become first non-Yadav and woman MLA from seat)

6. Tarapur (Munger district)

• Samrat Choudhary – BJP (Deputy CM, contesting from a JDU stronghold)
• Arun Kumar Sah – RJD (challenger)
  

7. Mokama (Patna district)

• Anant Singh – JD(U) (strongman, recently arrested in murder case)
• Veena Devi – Wife of former MP Surajbhan Singh (independent/influential figure, challenging Anant Singh)

8. Siwan

• Awadh Bihari Choudhary – RJD (former assembly speaker, six-time MLA)
• Mangal Pandey – BJP (health minister, making poll debut)
• Kafi Shamshir – AIMIM
• Intekhan Ahmad – Jan Suraaj Party

Battle for the heart of Bihar in phase 1

Raghopur

It briefly held the promise of a lip-smacking contest after Prashant Kishor teased a likely matchup with Tejashwi before finally opting out. But this Lalu Prasad family bastion remains among Bihar’s most-watched seats as Tejashwi eyes a hattrick this time. Lalu’s son, the opposition alliance’s CM face, is the towering figure in this seat in Vaishali (Hajipur) district dominated by Yadavs. But the tag of a prestige seat didn’t translate into significant development for Raghopur. Its long-awaited all-weather link with Patna became a reality only this June, when CM Nitish Kumar opened the six-lane Kacchi Dargah-Bidupur bridge, part of a longer Vaishali-Patna road. With no PK in the picture here, Tejashwi’s principal opponent is the man he defeated in 2015 and 2020, Satish Kumar. Now in BJP, he had won this seat for JDU in 2010, by defeating Tejashwi’s mother and former Bihar CM Rabri Devi.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: RJD (2020); RJD (2015); JDU (2010)

Alinagar


A political greenhorn takes on a contender who’s chasing redemption in this seat in Darbhanga district. But if Maithili Thakur can bank on her celebrity status as a singer and internet sensation in her maiden poll contest for BJP, Binod Mishra (63) of RJD would be hoping the math works in his favour this time since Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), the party against which he had lost here in 2020, is now a Mahagathbandhan partner. Brahmins at 25% and Muslims with another 23% make up significant voting blocs in this seat in Mithila region, which Thakur has promised to rename if she wins. Her alleged show of disrespect to Mithila’s cultural symbol, the ‘pag’ or cap, sparked a controversy. She has also been labelled an outsider, but would be looking to build on Union home minister Amit Shah’s appeal of ‘prachand bahumat’ for her, calling her a ‘daughter of Mithila’.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: VIP (2020); RJD (2015); RJD (2010)

Chhapra


Bhojpuri star Khesari Lal Yadav — his real name is Shatrughan Yadav — has been grabbing eyeballs on his poll debut, though BJP’s Chhoti Kumari would be fancying her chances in the seat that her party has won three times running since 2010 with the exception of a byelection in 2014, when RJD prevailed. Saran district, of which Chhapra is a part, has thrown up both national and Bhojpuri icons like Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and Bhikhari Thakur, who’s known as the ‘Shakespeare of Bhojpuri language’. Khesari has whipped up the campaign fever with de facto RJD boss Tejashwi Yadav and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav holding rallies for him, but BJP’s own brigade of Bhojpuri stars — Ravi Kishen and Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ — have weighed in to try and blunt his appeal.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: BJP (2020); BJP (2015); BJP (2010)

Saharsa


This seat has not gone BJP’s way in only one election since 2005 and the party has nominated the incumbent Jha to bag it again. He faces two new entrants — poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party and Indian Inclusive Party, whose founder Indrajeet Prasad Gupta is the challenger here. A massive rally held by Gupta featuring his supporters from the Pan and Tanti caste groups at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan is said to have drawn Mahagathbandhan CM face Tejashwi Yadav’s attention and led to IIP’s induction into the Mahagathbandhan. But there are no easy guesses as to the outcome here: if Jha polled more than a lakh votes in his winning bid in 2020, he’d also seen the rival RJD secure a similarly resounding mandate in 2015, when he had been on the losing side.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: BJP (2020); RJD (2015); BJP (2010)

Madhepura


If the Lok Sabha seat of the same name is associated with Yadav heavyweights like RJD founder Lalu Prasad and JDU’s Sharad Yadav, the assembly constituency has the record of never having gone with candidates of any other community. For challenger Saha, it’s a three-pronged task: become the first non-Yadav and woman to win the seat and find a way to deny Chandra Shekhar a fourth straight victory. Underlining the significance of this district, CM Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav have both campaigned for their party candidates. Yadavs make up around 32% of the population, and Muslims around 11% with SC community at 17.5%. The remaining 40% belong to the extremely backward caste (EBC) and ‘Pachpania’ groups, which have stayed heavily tilted in Nitish’s favour.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: RJD (2020); RJD (2015); RJD (2010)

Tarapur
This seat in Munger district made news when CM Nitish Kumar handed it to deputy CM and BJP leader Samrat Choudhary despite JDU having won it since 2010. He may have pitched the saffron camp’s most well-known face in Bihar in a socialist bastion, but the move revives a family link for Choudhary, whose father Shakuni Choudhary has represented Tarapur thrice while his mother Parvati, too, had won it in a 1998 bypoll. Choudhary takes on RJD’s Arun Kumar Sah in this agrarian constituency that has never elected a BJP MLA. Tarapur’s history is of radical opposites. Its natural beauty inspired poet Henry Derozio and painter Nandalal Bose, who was born nearby. During the 1930 Civil Disobedience movement, police firing killed 32 protesters here and later, in 1946, Tarapur witnessed ‘Partition riots’.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: JDU (2020); JDU (2015); JDU (2010)

Mokama
Mokama has been tense following the recent killing of RJD supporter Dularchand Yadav during campaigning, allegedly by associates of JDU candidate and strongman Anant Singh, leading to Singh’s arrest. That’s seen as having put NDA, which has been targeting the opposition with reminders of Lalu Prasad’s ‘jungle raj’, on the back foot here. On the eastern edge of Patna district, Mokama has been on the windward side of development — it is linked 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 inaugurated by PM Modi recently. Singh’s family dominates the seat — his wife and brother Dilip have held this seat while Singh himself has won it five times, including in 2020, but from the RJD camp. He has now switched sides.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: RJD (2020); Ind (2015); JDU (2010)

Siwan
Former Bihar assembly speaker, RJD’s Choudhary is a six-time MLA from this seat, while BJP and its earlier avatar Jana Sangh, too, have had a good run here. Siwan district’s national recall comes in equal measure for being the birthplace of India’s first President Babu Rajendra Prasad and being the turf of the late Mohd Shahabuddin, strongman and local MP. Under Shahabuddin, Siwan was seen as an RJD bastion, and Choudhary would be hoping to capitalise on old loyalties. Facing him is BJP MLC and Bihar health and family welfare minister Pandey, who is making his poll debut. The presence of Kafi Shamshir of AIMIM and Intekhan Ahmad of Jan Suraaj Party makes the contest in this seat that has a sizeable presence of Muslim voters a tricky one to call.

• Past Assembly Poll Winners: RJD (2020); BJP (2015); BJP (2010)