Heating up the States, EC announces single phase polling for Maharashtra, Haryana on October 21

Mumbai, September 21: Announcing the election bugle, the Election Commission on Saturday announced that the state of Maharashtra and Haryana will go on polls on October 21, 2019 and the results for the same will be announced on October 24. While the term of 288-member Maharashtra assembly ends on November 9, that of the 90-member Haryana assembly expires on November 2.

 

Filing of nominations begin on September 27 and end on October 4. Speaking to the media, CEC Sunil Arora announces, “Special security arrangements will be made for LWE affected areas in Gadchiroli and Gondia in Maharashtra.” The poll-bound Maharashtra has added nearly eight lakh voters since the April-May 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

 

The overall increase in the number of voters in Maharashtra compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls is 7,69,165. The voter tally has gone from 8,86,77,046 at the time of the Lok Sabha elections in April-May to 8,94,46,211 now. There are 288 assembly constituencies in Maharashtra - of which 234 are for general category candidates, 29 reserved for Scheduled Castes and 25 earmarked for Scheduled Tribes.

The state has 96,654 polling stations with average voter per booth at 925, said the ECI official. In the 2014 assembly polls, the BJP had won 122 seats followed by the Shiv Sena (63), the Congress (42) and the NCP (41). Smaller parties and independents had bagged 20 seats.

Announcing the dates, Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said that bypolls will also be held in 64 seats which includes Arunachal Pradesh (1), Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (1), Gujarat (4), Himachal Pradesh (2), Karnataka (15), Kerala (5), Madhya Pradesh (1), Meghalaya (1), Odisha (1), Puducherry (1), Punjab (4), Rajasthan (2), Sikkim (3), Tamil Nadu (2), Telangana (1) and Uttar Pradesh (11).