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After about two weeks of hectic campaigning, Maharashtra went to polls on Wednesday with an average voter turnout of 55-60 per cent.
The turnout in the morning hours was hovering at 20 per cent but as the day progressed, the beeline at the polling booths grew and by mid afternoon the average turnout reached a healthy 40 per cent.
At 52 per cent turnout, western Maharashtra saw brisk voting in the morning and afternoon. In the 26 constituencies of Mumbai, the voting average was at 17.44 per cent to start with. But by 1 pm it had climbed to 28 per cent and by 3 pm it was 38 per cent.
Most of the 288 constituencies saw an unprecedented five-way fight due to the break-up of decades-long political alliances.
With the ending of the 15-year-old Congress-NCP alliance and the 25-year-old BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, the mandate is bound to be fractured. While the fifth major contender is Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), other smaller parties are also putting up a tough fight this time.
Madhav Bhandari, spokesperson of the Maharashtra unit of the BJP, told BusinessLine that polling appeared to be on the lines of the Lok Sabha mandate. The party is confident of winning the election with a good majority in spite of the fact that it has never contested this many seats — about 170 — in the past. “We are still testing the waters but are confident of winning at least 150 seats,” he said.
The State has 8.35 crore eligible voters, selecting from 4,119 candidates. The largest Assembly constituency electorate-wise is Chinchwad near Pune with 4,84,080 voters. The smallest is Wadala in Mumbai with 1,96,859 voters.
Former ministers including Prithviraj Chavan, Ajit Pawar, RR Patil, Chhagan Bhujbal and Patangrao Kadam are in the poll arena from the ruling side. The candidates from the Opposition include Devendra Fadnavis and Vidhan Sabha Eknath Khadse.
In Karad constituency, Chavan said that in spite of the anti-incumbency wave, Maharashtra will vote for a Congress government.
NCP spokesperson Nawab Mallik said that this time individual politicians carried more weight than parties in the electoral battle.
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