A massive crowd at the public rally of Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhubani on November 9, 2025. Photo: X/@ChouhanShivraj via ANI
Ahead of the polling for the second phase of the Bihar Assembly Elections on Tuesday (November 11, 2025), a report released by the non-profit Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) showed that over 30% or 415 of the 1,297 (out of a total of 1,302) candidates have declared criminal cases against themselves.
Of these, 341 (or 26%) have declared serious criminal cases against themselves. These details have come to light on ADR’s analysis of self-sworn affidavits of the candidates, which is as per the guidelines of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in compliance with the Supreme Court.
Over 50% of the candidates from major parties like BJP, Congress, RJD, and Jan Suraaj Party have criminal cases. Among the major contesting parties, the number and share of candidates who have serious and other criminal cases are shown in the graphic below.
Nine candidates from the Prashant Kishore-led Jan Suraaj Party have cases related to crimes against women. Party-wise split of the number of candidates with declared cases related to murder, attempt to murder and crime against women are shown in the table below.
Out of the 1,297 candidates, 562 (43%) are crorepatis , which means that they have declared assets (movable and immovable) that are worth over ₹1 crore. Three hundred and seventy four candidates (28.8%) have assets over ₹20 lakh but lesser than ₹1 crore.
At least 75% of the candidates of major parties are crorepatis, as shown in the graphic below.
Party-wise analysis of assets shows that Jan Suraaj Party’’s candidates have average assets of over ₹5 crores, where as those of BJP and RJD have average assets of around ₹6.4 crore. Average assets of Congress and JD(U) candidates amounted to ₹7.4 crore and ₹9.1 crore, respectively, as shown in the table below.
Candidates with the highest assets are shown in the table below.
‘Red Alert Constituencies’
Out of the 122 constituencies in the second phase, ADR has flagged 73 (around 60%) constituencies as ‘Red Alert Constituencies’, which have three or more contesting candidates with declared criminal cases. The share of candidates in are shown in the map below (where the constituencies in grey are the ones which were included in Phase 1 of the elections).
Bihar recorded its “highest-ever” voter turnout as the first phase of the Assembly election ended with 64.66% votes polled. For the second and final phase, 3.70 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
Published – November 10, 2025 11:47 pm IST
