Bihar Assembly Elections 2020 which were held in three phases to elect a new Chief Minister for the state will finally get its new face. The state is all set to hail CM-elect tomorrow and this time Bihar might choose a young face.
According to the exit polls verdict, the Grand Alliance (GA), or Mahagathbandhan, comprising the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress, and the Left parties will come into power. Thus, this means Bihar will get a new and young chief minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who is celebrating his 31st birthday on Monday.
However, the decision of choosing the chief minister rest in the hands of voters who could also repose their faith in incumbent Nitish Kumar.
Notably, Bihar elections have been historical in itself as it happened amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Also, this was the first time in three decades that elections took place without RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who is imprisoned in a Ranchi jail following his conviction in multiple fodder scam case, and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan, who died in October following a brief illness.
The results will decide whether the voters of Bihar have decided to hand over the state’s baton to the young generation represented by Tejashwi and the LJP’s Chirag Paswan (37).
On the flip side, there are many who scoffed at exit polls' findings in the state capital, Patna.
“Wait for the counting day,” said Rajiv Ranjan, a spokesperson of the ruling Janata Dal (United).
Election Commission of India (ECI) has geared up to declare the results of the elections and have made elaborate arrangements for the same on Tuesday.
To count the votes which were cast in three phases on October 28, November 3, and November 7, the ECI has set up 55 counting centres in all the 38 districts of the state. Three counting centres each have been set up in four districts of East Champaran (which has 12 assembly constituencies), Gaya (10 seats), Siwan (eight constituencies), and Begusarai (seven constituencies).
Counting will be done under three-layer security provided at the centres. The first layer comprises Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the second layer is of Bihar military police, and the third of district armed police for 38 strongrooms across the state.
It has been said by a senior police official of the state police headquarters that "Bihar police officers are ensuring their safety from outside." He also added that 1,900 Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) are guarding 38 strong rooms, including in the state capital.
The AN College premises in Patna are the biggest strongroom in the state as the EVMs of 14 constituencies of Patna district are stored. At least one section of CAPF personnel would be deployed in the innermost perimeter round the clock. Video cameras would be provided to CAPF personnel to record all visits by polling personnel and polling agents.
A total of 106, 524 EVMs are in different strong rooms across 38 centers in Bihar, which will decide the fate of 3558 candidates including 370 women and a transgender in the fray for the 2020 assembly elections. The counting process starting at 8 am on November 10 will be video graphed, officials said, adding postal ballots would be counted first.
Bihar Assembly Elections 2020 recorded 57.05% turnout, marginally higher than that of 2015, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, as per official data. The voter turnout in the 2015 elections was 56.66%.
In this assembly election, leaders emphasized more on employment than development, as the majority of the youth is unemployed.
The RJD-led GA has announced that it will provide 1 million jobs to the youth. Though initially, the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) mocked at the proposal, later the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a part of the NDA along with the ruling JD (U), was compelled to announce 1.9 million jobs for youth.
"We have a road map for this exercise. The RJD is trying to fool innocent youth," Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal, the BJP’s Bihar unit chief, had said after the release of the party’s manifesto.
It is pertinent here to mention that the parties were able to lure the youth because of the sheer number of young voters and their craving for education and employment opportunities.
ECI data showed, of a total 729 million voters in Bihar, over 50% belong to the age group between 18 and 39.
While 700,140 voters are in the age group of 18 and 19 years, with no first-hand experience of what Prasad’s “jungle raj” (lawlessness) was like between 1990 and 2015.
The other 160 million voters are in the age-group of 20 and 29 years and around 20 million are between 30 and 39 years, who are least bothered about politics.
They are only focused on higher education, employment, and other related opportunities in a bid to make a decent living for themselves.
However, the Covid-19 induced lockdown has forced 1.6 million migrant laborers to return to their native state from different parts of the country and this has only added to their aspirations that will get an economically secure life in their state.