The election is expected to see an intense battle between the ruling Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi.
With the term of the Maharashtra assembly set to end on November 26, the state is gearing up for the assembly polls this week. Voting for all 288 seats of the Maharashtra legislative assembly will be held in a single phase.
Of the 288 seats, 234 come under general category, 29 are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and 25 are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST). According to reports, as many as 4,140 candidates are in the fray. “We received 7,078 valid nomination forms for 288 seats. Of these, 2,938 candidates have withdrawn nominations, leaving 4,140 in the fray,” the state chief electoral office official was quoted as saying in a PTI report
The election is expected to see an intense battle between the ruling Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi. In the Mahayuti alliance, the BJP is contesting the highest number of seats (148) among all the parties, followed by the Congress, which has nominated candidates for 103 seats. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena is contesting for 80 seats, while his deputy Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party will contest 53 seats.
Meanwhile, in the MVA, the Congress has nominated candidates for 103 seats, followed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) with 89 seats and Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) with 87. The remaining six seats were given to other allies of the MVA.
