Bihar Grew 8.6 Per Cent in 2024-25 Against India's 6.5, Has Reserved Half Its Panchayat Seats for Women Since 2006 and Holds the World Heritage Sites of Nalanda and Bodh Gaya

In the quick estimates published with its Economic Survey, Bihar’s gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of what a state produces in a year) grew 8.6 per cent at constant prices in 2024-25, against 6.5 per cent for India. In the November 2025 Assembly election, the Election Commission recorded a turnout of 67.13 per cent of 7,45,26,858 electors, the highest in Bihar since 1951, with 71.78 per cent of women voting against 62.98 per cent of men.

Both figures belong to a state that the 2011 Census, as the state’s own profile page lists it, counted at 10,40,99,452 people (10.41 crore), at a density of 1,106 per square kilometre. Census 2011 is still the latest completed count. This profile sets out how Bihar took its present shape, who governs it and how, what its economy earns, and what sets it apart.

From a division of Bengal to a state of 38 districts

The Patna High Court’s history page says a 1912 proclamation made Bihar and Orissa a separate province, cut out of Bengal. The court followed by Letters Patent of 9 February 1916 and began work on 1 March 1916 with a Chief Justice and six other judges. It remains Bihar’s High Court today. The Odisha government’s history page says Orissa became a province of its own on 1 April 1936, which left Bihar as a province by itself.

The present map dates from 15 November 2000. The Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000 created Jharkhand from 18 districts of Bihar, among them Ranchi, Dhanbad, Bokaro and Hazaribagh, on a day the Centre fixed by a notification of 14 September 2000. The Act divided the Assembly into 243 seats for Bihar and 81 for Jharkhand, and the Lok Sabha seats into 40 and 14. Bihar’s Rajya Sabha seats fell from 22 to 16, and Jharkhand received 6. The High Court at Patna stayed the High Court for Bihar while Jharkhand got a court of its own.

Who governs Bihar, and how

Bihar has two legislative houses. The Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) has 243 seats and the Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad) has 75, both numbers set by the 2000 Act. The state sends 40 members to the Lok Sabha, which our explainer on the Lok Sabha describes, and 16 to the Rajya Sabha.

According to the state’s planning profile, the administrative map has 9 divisions, 38 districts, 101 sub-divisions and 534 community development blocks, with about 45,000 revenue villages. Hindi in the Devanagari script is the official language under the Bihar Official Language Act, 1950, which the Bihar Gazette published on 29 November 1950. A section added by Bihar Act II of 1981 lets the state government notify Urdu alongside Hindi for specified purposes and areas.

In local government, Business Today reported in 2014 that about 4,200 mukhiya and sarpanch seats, half of the total, were reserved for women in 2006 under the Bihar Panchayati Raj Act, 2006. The magazine called Bihar the first state to introduce 50 per cent reservation for women in all tiers of panchayats. The national rules for village councils and municipalities are in our guide to the 73rd and 74th Amendments.

The Election Commission’s 12 November 2025 release says it webcast proceedings from all 90,740 polling stations of the two-phase Assembly election and that no re-poll was recommended anywhere in the state.

What the economy earns

Bihar’s GSDP in 2024-25 was Rs 9,91,997 crore at current prices and Rs 5,31,372 crore at 2011-12 prices, according to the state government’s economy page. Measured at current prices, the state grew faster than India in each of the three years from 2022-23 to 2024-25, at 17.9, 14.9 and 13.1 per cent against 14.0, 12.0 and 9.8 per cent. These are quick estimates, not final figures.

Income per person is lower than the national figure. Per capita GSDP was Rs 76,490 in 2024-25, up from Rs 46,412 in 2020-21, and PRS Legislative Research puts India’s figure for 2024-25 at Rs 2,34,859, so Bihar’s is about a third of it. The spread inside the state is wide. The state’s own page gives per capita district product of Rs 2,41,220 for Patna, Rs 1,05,600 for Begusarai and Rs 93,921 for Munger.

The mix is shifting. The secondary sector, which covers industry and construction, rose from 21.1 per cent of the state’s value added in 2020-21 to 26.8 per cent in 2024-25 at constant prices. Primary activity, which includes farming, fell from 21.9 to 18.3 per cent, and services stood at 54.8 per cent.

NITI Aayog’s 2023 progress review looks at poverty through health, education and living standards rather than income alone. It says Bihar, the state with the highest multidimensional poverty value in 2015-16, saw the fastest fall in that value in absolute terms, with the share of people counted as poor dropping from 51.89 per cent to 33.76 per cent in 2019-21. About 2.25 crore people left that poverty, the second-largest number after Uttar Pradesh’s 3.43 crore. At 33.76 per cent, Bihar still topped the report’s state-by-state chart.

Money from Delhi and the special category question

PRS’s analysis of the 2026-27 budget, which the state presented on 3 February 2026, expects Rs 2,10,074 crore, or 74 per cent of Bihar’s revenue receipts, to come from the Centre. The state’s own resources are put at Rs 75,203 crore, or 26 per cent. It budgets 21.7 per cent of spending on education, against an average of 14.5 per cent for 31 states and Union Territories in their 2025-26 budget estimates. PRS puts outstanding liabilities at 34 per cent of GSDP at the end of 2026-27.

The Sixteenth Finance Commission, which sets how central tax money is shared for 2026 to 2031, gave Bihar 9.948 per cent of the states’ pool in Table 8.9 of its report. Only Uttar Pradesh, at 17.619 per cent, receives more. Our explainer on the Finance Commission shows how the split is worked out.

Bihar has also sought special category status, a label the National Development Council once gave to states with features such as hilly terrain, low population density or a large tribal population, a border location, economic and infrastructural backwardness or non-viable state finances. On 22 July 2024 the Minister of State for Finance told the Lok Sabha, in a written reply to a member’s question, that an Inter-Ministerial Group had considered Bihar’s request and reported on 30 March 2012. The group found, on the existing criteria, that “the case for Special Category Status for Bihar is not made out.” The provisions the Constitution itself makes for particular states are a separate matter, covered in our piece on Article 371.

What sets Bihar apart

UNESCO inscribed the Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya in 2002 and the Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara in 2016. Its Bodh Gaya entry calls the complex one of the four holy sites related to the life of the Buddha and says Emperor Asoka built the first temple there in the 3rd century BC, with the present temple dating from the 5th and 6th centuries. Its Nalanda entry describes remains from about the 3rd century BCE and a monastic and teaching establishment that ran from the 5th to the 13th century CE. The full record of the university is in our article on Nalanda.

Vaishali, north of Patna, carries an older claim. The state tourism corporation says historians hold that one of the world’s first republics with an elected assembly flourished there in the 6th century BC, that Mahavira was born on its outskirts, and that the Buddha preached his last sermon at nearby Kolhua.

Bihar also grows most of India’s makhana, the popped seed of the fox nut. A Press Information Bureau document of 19 August 2026 says Bihar’s production is put at 60,000 tonnes of the 80,590 tonnes estimated nationally for 2025-26, nearly three-fourths of the total, and that the crop is concentrated in North Bihar and the Kosi basin districts of Supaul, Saharsa and Madhepura.

The same geography brings floods. The state’s Transformation Cell puts the flood-affected area at 68.80 lakh hectares, nearly 73.06 per cent of Bihar’s area and about 17.20 per cent of India’s flood-prone area. It says the 2024 flood season brought unexpected, intense flows in the Gandak, Bagmati, Kosi and Ganga, and that embankment-strengthening schemes were proposed afterwards.

What comes next

The Union Cabinet approved Census 2027 on 12 December 2025 at a cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore, in two phases: houselisting from April to September 2026 and population enumeration in February 2027. Bihar’s first new population count since 2011 will be taken in the second phase.