PatnaNovember 11, 2025 08:57 PM IST
First published on: Nov 11, 2025 at 08:57 PM IST
In January-February 2007, the top leaders of the CPI (Maoist) gathered in the village of Chormara in Bihar’s Jamui district for the party’s 9th Congress, the first meeting since it was formed three years earlier following the merger of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the People’s War Group. On Tuesday, the people of Chormara, a newly christened “model booth”, voted in their village for the first time in over three decades.
Chormara, located on a hilly terrain, was one of the 768 polling booths in the districts of Gaya, Jamui, and Rohtas where Maoists were once active, but this time did not need to be relocated to any “safer” areas. All three districts recorded a high turnout as of 5 pm, with 67.5% of voters in Gaya exercising their franchise, 67.81% in Jamui, and Rohtas registering a 60.69% turnout.
“As we have been able to almost put an end to LWE, we have converted the Chormara polling booth into a model booth. A total of 1,011 SC/ST voters in Chormara exercised their franchise at their original place,” Bihar additional director general of police (headquarters) Kundan Krishnan told The Indian Express.
Among those in the village in Barhat block who voted for the first time were Babulal Koda (75), Bhatan Koda (55), Chhatiya Devi (50) and Parvati Devi (62).
Babulal, a daily wager, said he had not gone to the polling stations in previous elections, starting in 1990, as they were located four kilometres away. “Most of us would not vote. Nor would any candidate come to campaign in our villages. We are very happy to vote this time. It is a special feeling,” he said.
Chhatiya Devi, a home-maker, said: “We were trained how to vote as we had not seen EVMs so far. There was no fear this time, unlike in the previous elections.”
In 2005, two years before the Maoists gathered in Chormara, the Naxals carried out a landmine blast in Bhimbandh in Munger, about 20 km from he village, in which then Superintendent of Police K C Surendra Babu, his driver, and bodyguard were killed along with six other policemen. Among the top Maoist leaders who attended the Party Congress in 2007 were the party’s general secretary Ganapati and then Politburo member Prashant Bose, who was arrested in Jharkhand in 2021.
In 2009, the Maoists blew up a primary school in Chormara. Following a series of such incidents in Jamui, Lakhisarai, Munger, Aurangabad, and Rohtas, the CRPF and state police personnel were deployed in the region. However, this also resulted in many villages in the Naxal-affected areas not voting in the past few state elections. However, the security situation has stabilised since 2022, when several Maoist commanders in the state surrendered and returned to the mainstream