NEW DLEHI: Election Commission Tuesday set the stage for another mouth-watering contest between BJP and its allies and their Congress-aligned rivals, announcing single-phase polls in Maharashtra on November 20 and two-phase voting on November 13 and 20 to elect the new Jharkhand assembly. Counting for both states, as well as 48 assembly and 2 Lok Sabha bypolls will be held November 23.
The twin contests are crucial for both sides, with BJP keen to build upon the advantage it gained after a stunning victory in Haryana and Congress and its allies looking to regain the momentum from their im- proved LS performance.
The two parliamentary bypolls are in Kerala’s Wayanad, from where Priyanka Gandhi will contest her first election, and Nanded in Maharashtra, which fell vacant after the death of sitting MP Vasant Chavan. While polling for 47 assembly seats and Wayanad will be held on November 13, the assembly seat of Kedarnath and Nanded LS constituency will vote on November 20.
Bypolls due in Basirhat in Bengal and Milkipur in UP were not announced in view of pending election petitions. The vastly altered political landscape of Maharashtra since the last polls, with Shiv Sena and NCP splitting and Uddhav’s Sena leaving BJP to join forces with Congress makes the current contest an absorbing affair.
Midweek polling day to ensure voters don’t choose to travel: EC
In Jharkhand, the imprisonment of CM Hemant Soren and his dramatic comeback has sharpened the tribal versus non-tribal faultline, bringing a sharper edge to what should have been a traditional incumbent versus challenger showdown.
“Elections are a festival of democracy and voters’ enthusiastic participation is desired and requested. We also appeal to the candidates to campaign fearlessly while honouring model code of conduct,” chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar, who was flanked by election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and S S Sandhu, said at a press conference to announce the poll schedule.
The latest assembly polls come close on the heels of BJP making history by winning a third straight term in Haryana, dashing Congress’s hopes of voting it out based on what it had wrongly gauged a s a strong anti-incumbency sentiment. Congress’s alliance with National Conference did win J&K polls, but it was the latter’s show all the way with the national party contributing just six seats to the combine’s 48-seat tally.
BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance had suffered reverses in Maharashtra LS polls, managing just 17 of the state’s 48 seats, even as the alliance between Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and NCP (Sharad Pawar) put up an impressive performance with 31 seats. This followed splits in both Shiv Sena and NCP midway through the five-year term, which enabled the BJP-led coalition comprising the breakaway factions to dislodge the Thackeray govt in 2022.
BJP will look to turn things around in Maharashtra and wrest back Jharkhand from the JMM-led alliance, which has been saddled with corruption charges. In Lok Sabha polls earlier this year, BJP had bagged eight of the 14 seats in Jharkhand, while JMM and Congress managed three and two seats respectively.
As many as 9.6 crore voters in Maharashtra, which includes 20.9 lakh first-time voters aged 18-19 years and 1.8 crore voters aged 20-29 years, will vote across 288 constituencies. In Jharkhand, 2.6 crore voters, including 11.8 lakh first-time voters, will vote across 81 constituencies.
The poll schedule takes into account multiple festivals crowding Nov, including Diwali, Chhath and Dev Deepawali. EC scheduled the polls towards the end of the second week of November to give enough time for migrant voters from Bihar to be done with Chhath festivities and related travel to their hometowns.
CEC said Wednesday was deliberately chosen for both polling days as it falls in the middle of the week and would make sure that voters don’t choose to travel out by clubbing the poll-day holiday with the weekend.
For the second time, EC has restricted the phases in a state seen as a security challenge. After winding up J&K polls in three phases, the commission has carried the trend forward by bringing down phases in Jharkhand, affected by Left-wing extremism, to just two from five in 2019. This was made possible by the Centre’s decisive push to tackle Left-wing extremism in Jharkhand by liberating several areas of the state from the hold of Maoists.
