Maharashtra assembly elections will be held in November, hints CM Eknath Shinde

Though the Election Commission hasn't announced dates for the Maharashtra assembly elections, chief minister Eknath Shinde hinted at an event in the city late Tuesday evening that the polls would be held in November. Stating that elections "will be held in two months," Shinde at the event appealed to people to elect Shiv Sena MLA Dilip Lande from the Chandivali assembly constituency.

Officials have said that the EC will announce assembly polls in Maharashtra only after the J&K and Haryana election results are out on Oct 4 and is likely to tie them up with the Jharkhand polls. EC sources had told TOI that elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand may be held in Nov and would be completed well before the term of the current Maharashtra assembly expires on Nov 26. Chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar, while announcing the poll schedule for J&K and Haryana last month, had said assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana - which were held together over the last few cycles - were delinked this time as the existing Haryana assembly's term was ending much earlier on Nov 3, 2024.

Maharashtra has 9.53 crore voters, according to the final electoral roll published on Aug 30, ahead of the upcoming assembly polls. This is a rise of 16.9 lakh voters in just three weeks since the draft roll was published on Aug 6. The state, however, has only 18.6 lakh voters in the 18-19 age-group of young and first-time voters. This accounts for less than 2% of the state's total voters.

An EC official said, "The time between the completion of the Jammu & Kashmir poll process on Oct 6 and Nov 3, by when a new Haryana assembly should be in place, was not enough to accommodate the entire poll process, including the nomination procedure, campaign and polling. Besides, in 2019, the Maharashtra assembly's term was only till Nov 9, unlike Nov 26 now, and much closer to the expiry date of the Haryana assembly on Nov 2, 2019, which is why the two states had gone to polls together."