Maharashtra Polls: Nominations End But Seat-Sharing Suspense Continues; Check Congress, BJP's Candidate Quota

Maharashtra Election 2024: The filing of nominations ended on October 30 for the 288-member Maharashtra assembly. Over 10,000 nominations have been filed for the 288 seats indicating stiff competition on each seat with thousands of independents also in the fray.  Despite nominations ending on Tuesday, the seat-sharing suspense has continued to hurt the BJP-led Mahayuti and Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi. Mahayuti is the alliance of Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction). While, MVA is the coalition of Shiv Sena (UBT) (Uddhav Thackeray faction), NCP (SCP) (Sharad Pawar faction) and the Congress party.

Mahayuti Seat Sharing

According to PTI, the BJP fielded candidates for 148 seats, while the Congress managed to get an upper hand in MVA by fielding 103 seats. BJP's ally Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena fielded candidates on 80 seats while Deputy CM Ajit Pawar's NCP nominated 53 contestants, taking the total to 281 seats. The Mahayuti has given five seats to its smaller allies while suspense continues on two segments. 

Maha Vikas Aghadi Seat Sharing

In the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the Congress is contesting on 103 seats followed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) on 89 and NCP (SP) on 87 seats. Six seats were given to other MVA allies, while there was no clarity on three assembly segments. 

Total Nominations, Candidates

While scrutiny of nominations will take place from today, a total of 7,995 candidates have filed 10,905 nominations with the Election Commission (ECI). Filing of nominations by candidates began on October 22 and the process ended on October 29. The verification and scrutiny of nomination papers will take place on October 30 and the last date for withdrawal of candidatures is November 4 (till 3 pm). Polling will take place on November 20 and votes will be counted three days later on November 23.

Model Code Violation

As many as 1,648 complaints of violation of the code of conduct were received on the C-Vigil application from October 15 to 29, out of which 1,646 have been resolved by the Election Commission, the Chief Electoral Officer's office stated.