Assembly polls in Maharashtra, Haryana to be held on October 21, counting on October 24

The Legislative Assemblies of Maharashtra and Haryana will go to the polls on October 21, with counting scheduled for October 24, Sunil Arora, Chief Election Commissioner, announced on Saturday. The two states will have a single phase of voting.

The Commission will also hold by-elections to 64 vacant Assembly seats in various states, including Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Kerala, Sikkim, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Assam, on the same date.

While Tamiil Nadu will see by-elections to two Assembly constituencies, Karnataka will have by-polls to 15 Assembly constituencies, Puducherry one Assembly constituency and Kerala will see by-polls to five Assembly constituencies.

The Maharashtra and Haryana assemblies’ terms end on November 2 and November 9, respectively. The Haryana Assembly has 90 seats, while Maharashtra has 288 seats. There are 8.94 crore eligible voters in Maharashtra, while Haryana has 1.82 crore eligible voters. The expenditure ceiling for each candidate in the two states has been fixed at Rs 28 lakh, the Commission announced.

Political parties in both states have requested the EC to look at whether the cost of bringing out advertisements  in newspapers by candidates who have cases against them, can be borne by the concerned political party or state.

Arora said the Commission will look into this issue on the coming Monday.

The Commission will send two special Expenditure Observers to Maharashtra. The two officials were earlier sent to Vellore.

The Lok Sabha elections in 2019 for Vellore were cancelled due to the use of money power. Over Rs 11 crore was seized in the constituency.