Live: Voting on 288 seats in Maharashtra today, voting will start shortly.

Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024 Live: Voting for the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly will be held on Wednesday (November 20). While the ruling ‘Mahayuti’ alliance is trying to retain power in this election, the opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi is hoping to make a grand return to power. Voting on all 288 seats of Maharashtra Assembly will start at 7 am and end at 6 pm. Counting of votes will take place on November 23.

During the election campaign, prominent leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and many Union ministers campaigned for their candidates in the state.

Apart from the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling Mahayuti alliance includes Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The alliance hopes to remain in power on the back of its popular schemes like ‘Majhi Ladki Bahin’ launched for women.

BJP, which is part of the ruling grand alliance, is contesting on 149 seats in the elections to be held on November 20, while Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has fielded its candidates on 81 seats. Ajit Pawar led NCP is contesting on 59 seats.

Congress included in MVA is contesting on 101 seats, Shiv Sena (UBT) on 95 and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) on 86 seats. Smaller parties including Bahujan Samaj Party and All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) are also contesting the elections. BSP has fielded 237 candidates and AIMIM has fielded 17 candidates.

Compared to the last assembly elections (2019), this time the number of candidates has increased by 28 percent. This year, 4,136 candidates are contesting the elections, whereas in 2019, 3,239 candidates were in the fray.

Of these candidates, 2,086 are independents. Rebel candidates are in the fray on more than 150 seats, in which Mahayuti and MVA candidates are contesting against the official candidates of their party.

Officials said that the updated number of registered voters till October 30 is 9,70,25,119. These include 5,00,22,739 male voters, 4,69,96,279 female voters and 6,101 transgender voters. Apart from this, the total number of disabled voters is 6,41,425, while the number of armed forces service voters is 1,16,170.

This time there will be 1,00,186 polling stations in Maharashtra, whereas in the 2019 assembly elections their number was 96,654. This increase has been made due to increase in the number of voters. About six lakh state government employees will be deployed for election duty.

Cash and goods worth Rs 252.42 crore were seized in actions taken by various enforcement agencies since the implementation of the Model Code of Conduct in the state on October 15. The seized items include Rs 63.47 crore in cash, 34,89,088 liters of liquor worth Rs 33.73 crore. Apart from this, narcotics worth Rs 32.67 crore and precious metals (gold and silver) worth Rs 83.12 crore have also been seized.