The Maharashtra and Jharkhand Assembly elections will be held across two phases beginning November 13, the Election Commission said Tuesday. Jharkhand will vote on November 13 and November 20 while Maharashtra will vote on November 20.
Counting of votes for both states will take place on November 23, the poll panel said.
In the 2019 Jharkhand election Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha – part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance – won 47 of the state’s 82 seats.
Over in Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the (then undivided) Shiv Sena dominated, winning 161 of the 288 Assembly seats. However, the alliance broke over power-sharing and the Sena joined hands with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress to form the government.
That government, however, lasted only till 2023; rebellions by the Sena’s Eknath Shinde and the NCP’s Ajit Pawar forced Uddhav Thackeray to resign and his coalition government to fall.
These are the final round of state polls for the year. The Bharatiya Janata Party – in power in Maharashtra with allies Shiv Sena and NCP – will look to finish 2024 on a high after a historic April-June general election that saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi become a three-time PM.
The BJP also won the Haryana and Odisha polls, becoming the first party to claim three successive election wins in the former and forming its first ever government in the latter.
The saffron party also saw N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party – which provided critical support after the Lok Sabha election – defeat Jagan Reddy’s YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh.
For the Congress, the Maharashtra and Jharkhand polls are critical after defeat in Haryana – in an election it was widely expected to win – and a slump in the first Jammu and Kashmir election in a decade, in which it is seen as an inconsequential ally of the ruling National Conference.
Last week the Congress was leading as votes were counted in Haryana, but soon slipped behind and lost to the BJP. The party later said it could not accept the result, complaining (again) of malfunctioning EVMs, or electronic voting machines, and the EC’s “unexpected slowdown”.
After the Haryana loss the Congress was slammed by the Shiv Sena faction of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. In an editorial in the party mouthpiece, it was flayed for failing to accommodate alliance partners or control “disobedience of local leaders”.
The Thackeray Sena faction insisted the Haryana defeat would not affect its relationship with the Congress’ state unit, but Sanjay Raut, other Sena (UBT) leaders, and those from other opposition parties all urged the larger party to re-think its stance on seat-sharing.
“This attitude leads to electoral losses – ‘if we feel we’re winning, we will not accommodate regional party but, in states where we’re down, regional parties must accommodate us…” Trinamool MP Saket Gokhale posted on X.
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