A year of elections is set to come to a close with the Jharkhand and Maharashtra Assembly polls and the Election Commission announced on Tuesday that the eastern state will vote in two phases, beginning November 13.
The second phase of voting will be held on November 20 and the counting will be done on November 23.
Jharkhand has 81 Assembly seats, with 41 needed to get a majority, and 2.6 crore eligible voters. Polling was held in five phases in the 2019 Assembly elections.
The state is currently ruled by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in an alliance with the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, which are also allies at the national level as part of the INDIA bloc. The alliance is hoping to form a government for the second consecutive time under Chief Minister Hemant Soren.
In the 2019 Assembly elections, the JMM had contested 43 seats and won 30, the Congress won 16 of 31 while the RJD managed to emerge victorious in only one of the seven constituencies it had put up candidates for.
The coalition faces a stiff challenge from the BJP, which was in power for a term before 2019 and is contesting the elections in an alliance with Sudesh Mahto’s All Jharkhand Students Union, Janata Dal United, Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) or HAM(S).
Of these, the LJP (Ram Vilas) and HAM (S) will be contesting the elections for the first time and the biggest party is the BJP, which had won 25 seats in the 2019 Assembly elections and 37 in 2014.
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