On elections' waiting list: Maharashtra, Jharkhand, 50 bypolls

New Delhi: The Election Commission has placed the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections on a queue, citing two reasons: first, the inclusion of the J&K election and second, floods in Maharashtra that are impeding block-level electoral activity. The assembly elections were anticipated to be announced with Haryana, as was the case in 2019.

However, that does not imply the two state polls can be put off very long.

A new state assembly must be established in Maharashtra and Jharkhand by November 26, 2024 and January 5, 2025, respectively.


The latter has time, but Maharashtra does not.

This is why its assembly election is often combined with Haryana. Haryana's assembly term ends November 3, 2024, days before Maharashtra's.Delhi is expected to have a new legislature by 23 February 2025, a month after Jharkhand's deadline.

Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, meanwhile, stated at a press conference in New Delhi on Friday that Maharashtra polls were decoupled this time around as the J&K poll schedule was a new element which was not the case in the 2019 election cycle.

The entry of J&K into the election schedule has brought in significant security implications and necessitated higher concentration of security forces in the union territory. Given recent terror attacks and conduct of assembly polls after a decade in J&K, the ECI has its hands full and could only accommodate polls to a smaller state like Haryana alongside.

The second factor, the CEC said, was due to floods affecting the work of Block Level Officers in Maharashtra. This is learnt to have delayed some of the electoral roll related processes in the state.

It is expected that this will be wrapped up soon. While senior ECI officials have visited both Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the full Commission led by CEC Rajiv Kumar and election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Sandhu is yet to visit the two states for a review.