Russia Threatens ‘Military Measures' If NATO Pushes Base On Greenland Near Polar Border
With Assembly elections looming in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has announced free electricity for all domestic consumers using up to 125 units per month, starting from August 1. The move is expected to benefit 1.67 crore families. The Bihar government also plans to install solar panels on rooftops and public spaces, especially for economically weaker sections, under the Kutir Jyoti scheme. In another major decision, Nitish Kumar has directed the education department to begin the process for TRE-4, the next round of Teachers' Recruitment Examination. So far, the state has appointed over 3 lakh teachers in previous rounds. A 35% reservation for women from Bihar will continue to apply. These twin announcements come just months before the expected October–November polls, signaling a powerful electoral pitch from the JD(U) chief.#nitishkumar #biharpolls2025 #freeelectricity #tre4 #teacherrecruitment #solarscheme #biharnews #electionpromise #biharcm #toi #toibharat #bharat #trending #breakingnews #indianews
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NDTV
2 hours ago
- NDTV
Bihar Voter List Revision Could Cut 23,000 Per Constituency Before Election
New Delhi: Fifty-six lakh people across Bihar will be removed from the voter list after the Election Commission 's ' special intensive revision ', the poll panel said Wednesday evening. The list of 'unverified' voters include 20 lakh dead people, 28 lakh whose primary residence is now in another state (making them ineligible to voter in Bihar), and seven lakh registered in more than one place. An additional one lakh people on the curent list cannot be contacted. Meanwhile, a further 15 lakh voters did not return verification forms, meaning they too are likley to find themselves struck off the roll when voting begins later this year. On Tuesday the poll panel said around 52 lakh entries had been deleted, and last week that a number of registered 'voters' were from foreign countries. Meanwhile, The re-verification of voters - a regular and constitutionally mandated exercise - has run into problems in Bihar because of the proximity of the exercise to the Assembly election. The opposition has criticised the timing and alleged it was orchestrated to eat into its voter base. The reference was to voters from poorer and marginalised sections, who may struggle to gather thedocuments - not including even the EC's own ID card - needed to re-verify themselves. NDTV Explains | Row Over 'Special Intensive Revision' Of Bihar Voter List Challenges to the exercise were filed in the Supreme Court. The matter is being heard and the court allowed the revision to continue for now, but it did also ask questions about the timing. The court also directed the EC to ensure the process is completed, including hearing and settling of appeals by people removed from the list, before the election. The EC has said the final list will be published September 30. What This Means For Bihar Election The state has 243 constituencies. Deletion of 56 lakh names from the voter list means an average of 23,045 voters per constituency will not be allowed to vote. The opposition has said that even a one per cent purge of names on the existing list of voters - a list used for the past 10 major elections in the state - would be unacceptable. For context, a one per cent exclusion is around 7.9 lakh voters or about 3,251 voters per constituency. In the 2020 election the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal lost 52 seats by margins of 5,000 or fewer votes and 40 by margins of 3,500 or fewer. The RJD won 75 seats - the most by any one party - but still fell short of the halfway mark of 123 after its ally, the Congress, flopped. Combined, the RJD-led alliance won 110 seats. The political slugfest between the opposition RJD-Congress and the ruling BJP-JDU played out ferociously in the Bihar Assembly this afternoon, with the RJD's Tejaswhi Yadav and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of the JDU leading their parties' charge. There was also a big twist after a MP from Nitish Kumar's party, Girdhari Yadav, offered his 'personal opinion' - that the Election Commission had "forcefully imposed" the voter list revision.
India Today
2 hours ago
- India Today
Bihari vs ‘Bahari': The election debate in Nitish land
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated July 28, 2025)Bihar, in many ways, is ground zero for post-Mandal reservation politics. Innovations on that had started back in 2013, when the Nitish Kumar government introduced a landmark policy, reserving 35 per cent of police jobs—within caste quotas and beyond—for women. By 2016, this policy was extended to all government posts in the state. Now, nearly a decade later, there's a new twist to reservation a raging debate about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and its concomitant focus on natives and outsiders, a piece of evolution has crept into that old schema of quotas that readjusts it to this new reality of electoral a quiet yet politically charged manoeuvre on July 8, the Bihar cabinet amended its flagship gender quota, restricting the 35 per cent state government jobs exclusively to women domiciled in Bihar. For the first time, aspirants from outside the state—baharis—have been formally excluded. On paper, this appears a mere tightening of bureaucratic criteria. Politically, however, the chain of cause and effect is clear. The SIR process is creating an atmosphere polarised on nativism, of the sort only occasionally seen before in Bihar. In 2015, for instance, Nitish had drummed up some passions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'DNA remark' and framed it as a conflict between 'an outsider and me'. Today, again, the truism that only Bihar residents can vote in its elections has been granted a certain currency. So, it makes perfect sense, with just three months or so left for the assembly election, to fine-tune quota policies to catch that was indeed some goading. Jan Suraaj Party leader Prashant Kishor had mounted a persistent critique on this front, accusing Nitish of opening Bihar's job market to outsiders in pursuit of national ambitions. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, too, had recently promised to implement a 100 per cent domicile-based policy should his party form the next government. To head them off, Nitish appears to have stepped into—or at least nodded towards—the long-simmering bahari-bhitari (outsider–insider) debate. What better way than to inaugurate this with women, a constituency Nitish has long cultivated. Especially since women are now increasingly seen as decisive in shaping the state's electoral fortunes, with a voting percentage that has consistently outgunned that of male voters by a good country mile over the last decade and a POLITICSWith the latest quota policy, Bihar has joined the ranks of states like Maharashtra and Jharkhand, where the insider-outsider divide has long featured prominently in political discourse. For years, Nitish has carefully distanced himself from the more incendiary rhetoric of his alliance partners, who frequently raised concerns about Bangladeshi infiltrators and invoked the bahari-bhitari narrative. While he never openly endorsed such language, this latest move signals a subtle yet significant restricting job reservations to domiciled Bihari women, Nitish appears to have crafted his own version of the insider-outsider paradigm—less inflammatory, perhaps, but no less exclusionary. It's a quiet deployment of weaponry he once abjured, now repurposed in the language of administrative reform. In doing so, he has stepped into a narrative he once preferred to observe from the to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
NDA looks divided over roll revision in Bihar
Patna: The NDA looks divided over the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar . While LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan and BJP leader and Union minister Giriraj Singh defended the process on Wednesday, JD(U) MP from Banka, Girdhari Yadav, said the Election Commission (EC) has no practical knowledge about Bihar and its history and geography and imposed the exercise on the state in rainy season when people are busy in agricultural activities. The Banka MP said the one-month time limit for submitting documents for voter list revision was impractical. July 25 is the deadline to submit the forms along with the supporting documents required. Even JD(U) MLA from Parbatta in Khagaria, Sanjeev, also raised concern and said many poor people of his constituency working outside Bihar were facing problems in filling their enumeration forms with the documents required. The JD(U) MP said it took 10 days for him to arrange the relevant documents and asked what will happen to his son's voting right as he was in the US. Sharing his experience, he also questioned the time limit of voter list revision and said that at least six months should be given for this process. However, he said it was his personal opinion and he did not care what the party was saying on this issue. "But this is the truth. If I cannot speak the truth, then why have I become an MP," he said. The Parbatta MLA also questioned the timing of SIR and said a large number of people from Bihar work in other states. "How will they be able to participate in the SIR process in such a short time," he asked and said it should have started by the time of Holi. The ECI says SIR is necessary to remove the names of those who are either deceased or have migrated to other places, or registered twice. The opposition has been alleged that the process targets the voters from marginalised and poor communities who don't possess the documents ECI requires as it has excluded Aadhaar and EPIC for voter verification. However, Union minister Chirag accused the opposition of deliberately spreading misinformation about the SIR to suit their political narrative. "It is beyond my understanding what the opposition really wants. Is it not correct that after the parliamentary elections, they complained about the voter list? The same thing they alleged after the Maharashtra elections. Now, the solution is SIR only. It is not the first time SIR is happening," he said. Giriraj also accused the opposition of politicising a constitutionally mandated process. "They crush the Constitution but take Baba Saheb's name. They are worried about the Rohingyas, the Bangladeshis. That's why they are scared," he alleged.
