Bihar sees record voter turnout

At 64.66%, Phase-I betters state’s highest ever turnout, says Election Commission

- ARCHIS MOHAN

At 64.66 per cent, Bihar recorded the highest ever voter turnout in its electoral history on Thursday, the Election Commission (EC) said in a press statement issued in the evening after the conclusion of the Phase-I of polling on 121 of the total 243 seats.

The EC said that the voter turnout figure of 64.66 per cent was updated as of 8.15 pm with 1,570 presiding officers yet to update the figures on ECINet, suggesting that the turnout percentage could go further up.

EC officials said the historic voter turnout vindicated the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls that it carried out in the state in recent months, which “purified” the electoral rolls. The SIR identified almost 6.5 million voters who were either deceased, or had shifted their residence outside of the state, that is they were no longer ordinary residents of Bihar, or were not citizens of India.

According to EC data, the voter turnout on these 121 seats was 64.66 percent, a sharp 7.37 per cent increase over the 2020 Assembly polls turnout of 57.29 per cent. It pointed out the voter turnout bettered the previous high of 62.57 per cent recorded in the Assembly polls in 2000.