Bihar Assembly Elections 2025: With Half Of State's Households Affected, Migration Becomes A Talking Point

Patna: Even as the issue of migration has been raised by politicians from all hues off and on in Bihar, it has seldom become a major poll issue driving voter behaviour.

However, the coming assembly election may be different. Nearly 50 percent households are exposed to migration in Bihar. 

The issue of migration was firmly raised by Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor even before the state entered the poll mode. Other leaders like RJD`s Tejashwi Yadav and another young politician, union minister Chirag Paswan , are also trying to bring forth the issue of migration before the electorate forcefully. Recently, Tejashwi appealed to the people to give him one chance to end migration.

In the coming assembly election, whether the issue of migration will remain restricted to poll rhetoric or emerge as a major poll plank, only time will tell, remarked a political analyst.

The issue of migration caught the attention of everybody during the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar as apprehensions were raised that names of a large number of them would be dropped from the voter list due to their failure or inability to fill enumeration forms with mandatory documents on time.

Former director of AN Sinha Institute of Social Sciences Dr DM Diwakar said that the issue of migration was going to become a major poll issue, although for the first time. He said that the distress migration issue assumed serious proportions when migrant workers faced serious hardship after the imposition of lockdown to check the Covid-19 pandemic. Workers who returned to Bihar from various states wanted to work in their native state but had to return in view of lack of opportunities here, he added.

On the other hand, former professor of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Pushpendra Kumar Singh said that people of Bihar had a long history of migration, as migration became a natural phenomenon over a period of time. He asserted that he did not consider migration was going to become any major issue in the election. 

Prime Minister Narendra  Modi instead of speaking on the issue during his public meetings, talked more about ‘jungle raj’, allegedly prevailing during the previous Lalu-Rabri regime and how Nitish government gave Rs 10,000 to women for  their self employment.