The last round of Assembly elections in a big poll year will be held in Maharashtra and Jharkhand this month. Maharashtra will vote in a single phase on November 20 while the Jharkhand elections will be held in two phases on November 13 and November 20. Counting will take place on November 23.
Maharashtra, which has 288 seats, is set to witness an Assembly election which will be unique in the country’s history, with two parties - the NCP and Shiv Sena - splitting and their factions facing off against each other in separate alliances. The political equations had changed after the 2019 elections, when the united Shiv Sena parted ways with the BJP and party chief Uddhav Thackeray became the chief minister after aligning with the Congress and the BJP.
The ruling Mahayuti coalition, consisting of the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP, suffered a setback in the Lok Sabha elections, winning only 17 of the state’s 40 seats. The Maha Vikas Aghadi, which has the Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) as its constituents, won 30 and is hoping that this will translate into an election victory in the Assembly polls. The ruling coalition, however, remains confident and has been buoyed by the BJP’s stunning victory in Haryana, where exit polls and experts had predicted that the party was going to lose to the Congress. The ruling alliance is also banking on schemes like ‘Ladki Bahin’, under which eligible women get Rs 1,500 a month, to win voters over. Jharkhand’s 81 Assembly seats are also expected to be closely fought with the ruling JMM-Congress-RJD-Left alliance on one side at the BJP-All Jharkhand Students Union-JDU-LJP(Ram Vilas) coalition on the other. Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who was arrested in January and granted bail six months later, is hoping for a second term. In Jharkhand too, the momentum was seen to be with the JMM-Congress alliance until the Haryana Assembly election results, but a closer contest is expected now.
