'Bihar Assembly Polls 2025: First Randomisation Of Over 54,000 EVMs And VVPATs Completed Across 18 Districts,' Says ECI

Patna: District Election Officers (DEO) of all the 18 districts going to polls on the first phase of the Bihar Assembly elections have completed the first randomisation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM)-Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), the Election Commission of India (ECI) said on Monday.

"The District Election Officers (DEO) of all the 18 districts of Bihar going to elections in Phase-I have completed the first randomisation of EVM-VVPATs which have passed the First Level Checking (FLC) on October 11, 2025 (Saturday)," the statement from the poll body read.

Constituency-wise lists of randomised EVMs and VVPATs were shared with the representatives of all National and State Recognised Political Parties at their respective district headquarters, the ECI said.

The First Randomisation was done through the EVM Management System (EMS) by the DEOs in the presence of the representatives of the National and State Recognised Political Parties.

"After the first randomisation, a total of 54,311 Ballot Units (BUs), 54,311 Control Units (CUs) and 58,123 VVPATs were randomly allotted to the 121 Assembly Constituencies having 45,336 Polling Stations," the statement mentioned.

The randomised EVMs and VVPATs will be stored in the respective Assembly Strong Room in the presence of the representatives of national and state political parties, and after the finalisation of the list of contesting candidates, the list of first randomised EVMs and VVPATs will be shared with all the contesting candidates also.

The 243 Assembly seats will go to the polls in two phases on November 6 and November 11, with counting of votes to be held on November 14.

This upcoming electoral contest will be between the NDA, led by the BJP, and Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)), and the INDIA bloc, led by Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party, and Tej Pratap Yadav's Janshakti Janta Dal (JJD) are also going to debut in the upcoming polls.

While the INDIA bloc has not announced its seat-sharing arrangement, the NDA announced its earlier after thorough discussions between allies.

Under the arrangement, the BJP and JD(U) will contest 101 seats each, while the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) will contest 29 seats. The Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) will contest six seats each.

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