PM Modi and Amit Shah to hit poll campaign trail in Maharashtra

The BJP announced on Sunday that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will address nine and 18 public meetings respectively in Maharashtra in the run-up to the upcoming assembly elections. It is the first major round of elections since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. According to Chandrakant Patil, the BJP state unit president, two of the PM’s meetings would take place in Pune and Satara on October 17. He also revealed that western Maharashtra would witness a majority of Shah’s rallies. Patil further added that they had asked all the candidates from the Pune district to attend the public meetings of the Home Minister and PM Modi. 

He said, "Prime Minister Narendra Modiji will address nine public meetings, two of them are scheduled to take place in Pune and Satara on October 17." Patil added, "We have asked alliance candidates and their party workers from 11 constituencies in Pune district to attend the public meetings of Modi and Shah.” 

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The ‘Mahayuti’ alliance 

Unlike 2014, when the BJP and Shiv Sena (SS) contested the elections separately, both the parties finally managed to form an alliance this time. While the former will contest on 150 seats, SS is in the fray in only 124 constituencies. The remaining 14 seats will be distributed among other allies like the Republican Party of India (Athawale), Shiv Sangram Party, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, and Rayat Kranti Sanghatna. However, the alliance talks took considerable time owing to SS’s insistence on fighting an equal number of seats as the BJP.  

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In the end, their demand for the post of Deputy CM has also not been officially conceded by the BJP. This has probably been influenced by the BJP’s performance in the previous Assembly election when they won 122 seats as against 63 won by the SS. Similarly, BJP and SS won in 23 and 17 Lok Sabha constituencies respectively in the 2019 General elections. At the same time, the decision to field Aaditya Thackeray from Worli has increased the possibility of SS bargaining hard for important ministries in the post-election scenario. On the other hand, NCP and Congress are also fighting the elections as an alliance.

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Maharashtra Assembly elections 

The Election Commission of India recently announced the state Assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra, along with by-polls in several other States. The total strength of the Maharashtra Assembly is 288, out of which nine seats are reserved for the SC and five for the ST category. In total, Maharashtra has 8.94 crore registered voters, out of which 1.16 lakh are service voters. 1.8 lakh ballot units, 1.28 lakh control units, and 1.39 lakh VVPATs to be used in the state. While the voting will take place on October 21, the results will be declared on October 24. 

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(With PTI inputs)