Polling to choose the next government of Maharashtra -- the year's last and most-watched contest -- began this morning. In Jharkhand, the remaining 38 seats also went to polls. The counting of votes will take place on Saturday. Maharashtra, with its 288 assembly seats, has witnessed a bitter battle between the ruling Mahayuthi -- Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, the BJP and Ajit Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party -- and the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, a coalition of Sharad Pawar's faction of the NCP, Uddhav Thackeray's faction of Shiv Sena and the Congress.