Will Migrants Be the ‘X Factor’ In Bihar Elections

Migrant workers, not women, will be the ‘X factor’ in the Bihar assembly election, Jan Suraaj party founder Prashant Kishor has said. He attributed the high voter turnout rate to a higher number of migrant workers exercising their rights this time. 

Tejashwi Yadav, the chief ministerial face of the opposition alliance, meanwhile, linked women with migrant workers, saying women will vote against chief minister Nitish Kumar’s government because they want their sons and brothers to be working in their home state. 

Evidently, job-related out-migration is one of the key factors in Bihar assembly election 2025, one that Kumar dubbed his last election. 

The 2011 Census reports 74.54 lakh migrants from Bihar living in the rest of the country. This is one-tenth of Bihar’s total electorates. The state also has the highest proportion of young people in the country—about 58 percent of Bihar’s population is below 25 years of age.

Bihar has one of the highest total fertility rates in the country. Here, population density increased significantly between 2001 and 2011—from 881 people per square km to 1,106 per square km, which is the highest among major states. Amidst this increasing population and youth share, the lack of industrialisation has turned lack of job opportunities into a major issue.  

Bihar witnessed a record turnout of 64.66 percent during the first phase of voting on November 6—the highest ever voter participation. “A large number of migrant labourers, who returned during Chhath, stayed back to vote,” Kishor said after the first phase polling, and claimed that these people are voting for his party. 

Some quarters, however, are attributing this spike to a sense of panic among migrant workers for voting, as the the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of the Election Commission of India (ECI) had also linked citizenship with voting rights. “Many people went to vote just to ensure they are in the electoral roll,” said a CPI(ML)(Liberation) candidate from Bhojpur district. 

However, the gender-wise break-up of voter turnout has not been published as of November 10, for which Yadav slammed the poll panel. “This is happening for the first time. Earlier, it was given immediately,” Yadav, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) heir, said.

This is one of the reasons why it was not clear till the second phase polling to what extent migrant workers—mostly men—and women voters may have influenced the voter turnout spike. 

“Out-migration for jobs has been one of our key campaign issues. This government has failed to create jobs, which is why millions move out of the state in search of jobs,” said Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of CPI(ML)(Liberation), one of the key components of the opposition alliance. 

During his campaign, Yadav, son of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) founder-cum-former chief minister Lalu Prasad,  stressed on building IT and textile hubs, food-processing and agro-based industries in the state if they come to power. The opposition alliance alleged that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has turned Bihar into a supplier of cheap labour to other states. 

The JD(U)’s alliance partner, the BJP, had sought to divert the issue of migration towards ‘infiltration’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleged during his campaign in Bihar that ‘infiltrators’—by which they mean illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh—were eating into Bihar’s resources. Driving them out is the solution, he argued.  

Whether this point of campaign strikes a chord with Bihar voters remains to be seen, as the SIR exercise did not reveal any significant presence of foreign nations in the electoral roll.