New Delhi: Assembly polls in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase on 20 November and counting will be on 23 November, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar announced Tuesday. The term of the Maharashtra assembly ends on 26 November.
At a press conference in Delhi, along with election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Kumar also gave out the dates for the elections in Jharkhand, where the assembly term ends on 5 January, 2025. The polls here will be held in two phases, on 13 and 20 November. The results will also be on 23 November.
On 20 November, one assembly seat in Uttarakhand will have bypolls, as well as the Nanded parliamentary seat in Maharashtra. All results will be on 23 November.
After announcing the dates, CEC Rajiv Kumar cautioned pollsters, calling for “self-introspection” since there had been “huge distortion” in exit polls. He also questioned early trends shown on television channels within a mere 15 to 30 minutes of the start of counting.
Kumar said the poll body was setting “a new gold standard” by making its intentions clear at the time of the date announcement.
“During the Lok Sabha poll announcement, we promised to tackle the issue of 4Ms and not allow muscle, money, misinformation, and MCC violations… At the time of the Jammu and Kashmir poll announcement, (there were) increasing threats which made people think whether the EC could hold the elections. On 16 August, however, we made the bold announcement that the world would watch nefarious intentions fail as you will participate in the celebration of democracy,” Kumar added.
In Maharashtra, the fight will be between the ruling Mahayuti alliance and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, comprising the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) or NCP (SP), and the Congress.
The Mahayuti includes the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.
In the general elections this year, the BJP-led alliance won 17 of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP won only nine seats, down from 23 five years ago. The MVA finished well ahead with 30 seats.
In 2019, the BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena fought under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) banner for the state’s 288 assembly seats while the Congress and the undivided NCP were part of the UPA.
Although they won a majority together, the BJP and the Sena were not able to form a government due to internal squabbles. Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray then joined arch-rivals Congress and NCP to come to power as the MVA.
Thackeray’s government collapsed in June 2022 after colleague Eknath Shinde walked out with a majority of legislators. Shinde formed the next regime with the backing of the BJP and became the chief minister. The NCP split, too, with Ajit Pawar leaving party founder and chief Sharad Pawar to join the Mahayuti government under Shinde.
The Jharkhand elections will be in 81 constituencies. In 2019, the state government was formed by a coalition of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal with the JMM’s Hemant Soren becoming chief minister.
Soren was replaced as CM for several months this year by Champai Soren following his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case. He returned to office in July after securing bail.
With Soren having established himself strongly in state politics according to political analysts, the BJP is grappling with a lack of “strong” local leadership in its bid to dislodge him from power. It’s turning to central leaders and those from other states to make up for this deficit, ThePrint had reported earlier.
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