The Election Commission has on Saturday announced the dates for the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana. Both the states will go to poll on October 21 and the results will be declared on October 24 in a single phase.
As per norms, the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) immediately came into force from today itself in both the states.
“In Maharashtra and Haryana, the notification will be issued on September 27. The last date of filing nominations is October 4. Polling will be held on October 21 while counting will take place on October 24,” Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora said while addressing a press conference here.
Maharashtra and Haryana are both the first states to go to polls after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections which marked a historic win for the BJP. The term of the assembly for Maharashtra and Haryana ends on November 9 and November 2, respectively.
In the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year, both these states had witnessed a saffron surge as BJP had made a clean sweep by winning all 10 seats in Haryana while bagging a total of 41 out of the 48 seats in Maharashtra along with its alliance partner Shiv Sena.
Meanwhile, during 2014 Assembly elections both these states witnessed a shift in preferences and BJP had emerged victorious outstripping the incumbent Congress in both states.
Here’s a look back at how parties fared in 2014 assembly elections in both the states of Maharashtra and Haryana.
Maharashtra:
The Assembly or the Vidhan Sabha in Maharashtra has a total strength of 288 seats. The ruling BJP and its alliance partner Shiv Sena will be fighting it out with Congress-NCP combine.
In the 2014 assembly polls, the BJP-Sena alliance had ousted the Congress-NCP combine by capturing a total of 185 seats out of the total 288 seats securing a clean majority. While BJP emerged as the single largest party by winning 122 seats, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena secured 63 seats.
Following the Congress-NCP alliance’s performance in the 2014 general election, the NCP had demanded 144 seats to contest and rotation of the Chief Minister’s post between parties. Both parties had held negotiations but failed to reach a conclusion. Congress then declared its list of candidates for 118 seats on September 25, 2014, without consulting NCP which resulted in peeving NCP party founder Sharad Pawar. Thus, the NCP unilaterally severed its 15-year-old alliance with the Congress party.
While BJP and Shiv Sena joined hands after the poll results, Congress and NCP had contested the state elections separately. Coming as a major embarrassment for the grand old party it only secured 42 out of the 287 seats it contested, while NCP won 41 seats out of the 278 seats it contested.
Senior Congress leader Narayan Rane and Harshwardhan Patil who were big hopes for the party, could not make a mark and Congress had to face major humiliation in Maharashtra as it lost its ruling state to BJP.
BJP’s key leaders had an easy win. The party’s state president then, Devendra Fadnavis, who took over as the Chief Minister in the state, won from Nagpur South West constituency by edging past his closest rival, Congress’ Prafulla Vinod Gudadhe by 58942 votes.
Haryana:
In another jolt, BJP had swept Haryana from Congress’ command after its whooping victory in the 2014 Haryana Legislative Assembly election. The 2014 Haryana assembly polls saw BJP winning the elections with 47 seats in the 90-member House here too, emerging as the single largest party. Whereas, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the then incumbent Congress fell short at 19 and 15 seats, respectively. BJP’s ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and BSP won one seat each, while independents had bagged five seats.
The voter turnout in the state was recorded at 76.54 per cent which became a new state record. Voting was held on October 15, 2014, and the result was announced four days later.
The BJP won a majority with 47 seats. With BJP’s alliance partner Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which won 1 seat, the NDA alliance of BJP and SAD won 48 seats in the 2014 Haryana Assembly elections and BJPs Manohar Lal Khattar was chosen to head the government in 2014.
Meanwhile, the poll commission has also announced the date of bye-elections in 64 constituencies across the country. “Bye-elections to the 64 constituencies across Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, MP, Meghalaya, Odisha, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh will also be held on October 21; counting of votes will take place on October 24,” CEC Arora said.
