Why Election Commission didn't announce elections in Maharashtra

The Election Commission of India on Friday announced the schedule for assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana. The elections in J&K will be held in three phases starting from September 20. In Haryana, the elections will be held on October 1. The results will be out on October 4 for J&K and Haryana.

While many anticipated that Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar would announce the schedule for the Maharashtra elections as well, he explained why this wasn’t the case. He said, Maharashtra elections will be announced later due to security requirements for Jammu and Kashmir.

"In the past, Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections were held together, and at that time, Jammu and Kashmir was not a factor. This year, however, we have four elections to manage initially—J&K, Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand—and a fifth one shortly after in Delhi."


"Given the requirement for security forces and the recent heavy rainfall in Maharashtra along with upcoming festivals, we have decided to conduct two elections simultaneously."

The 288-member Maharashtra legislative assembly tenure of the current government ends in October 2024. The Maharashtra election will see a two-way fight between the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition, of the UBT Sean, NCP -Sharad Pawar and the Congress, and the Maha Yuti Alliance of the BJP, Shiv Sena-Eknath Shinde and NCP-Ajit Pawar. In 2019 the BJP and undivided Sena coalition had come to power in the state but later split.

Meanwhile, Voting for J&K elections will be held on September 18, 25 and October 1. Kumar made a stark observation over the acceptance of elections in J&K, saying that the people of there "chose ballots over bullets". In the parliamentary elections held in April and May this year, J&K achieved its highest voter turnout in 35 years, reaching 58.46 per cent.

In Haryana, there will be 7,132 stations in urban areas and 13,497 in rural areas. Average voters per station would be around 977 people. Kumar also announced that polling stations will be set in high-rise societies in urban regions to increase the voter turnout.