Campaign cacophony ceases in Maharashtra

The month-long election cacophony ended in Maharashtra Monday evening for the 288 assembly seats and lone Lok Sabha constituency Beed, which go to polls Oct 15.

"We are fully prepared for the elections and our entire machinery is in place. Around 8.35 crore voters will exercise their franchise to select from among 4,119, including 276 women, candidates in the fray," an election department official told IANS.

The last day of campaigning was marked by scores of rallies, road-shows, door-to-door campaigns, padyatras, bike-processions, etc as candidates frantically tried to make their impression on the voters.

Of the 288 seats, 29 are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 25 for Scheduled Tribe candidates.

The voting will be done at 91,376 polling stations across the state with a total of 151,032 Ballot Units and 114,255 Control Units deployed.

There are 83 constituencies with more than 15 candidates, and Nanded South has the maximum - 39 nominees - in the fray.

However, Akola and Guhagarh constituencies have only five candidates each, the lowest.

Chinchwad near Pune is the largest assembly constituency with a whopping 484,080 voters, while central Mumbai's Wadala is the tinest with just 196,859 voters.

The Congress, seeking a fourth consecutive term in power, has put up the largest number of candidates - 287, followed by the Shiv Sena with 282 nominees.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is next with 280 candidates, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party with 260, and Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena with 219 contestants, the Communist Party of India with 34) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist with 19 candidates.

Another 761 belong to various registered and smaller parties and a staggering 1,699 are independents.

A majority of the seats have six-cornered contests of the five main parties- Congress, NCP, BJP, Shiv Sena, MNS and BSP, besides other parties like Samajwadi Party, CPI, CPM and various state parties.

All the major parties campaigned aggressively with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding over two dozen rallies, as well as several union ministers, chief ministers of BJP ruled states and BJP president Amit Shah.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi also conducted around a dozen rallies, besides NCP president Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and MNS president Raj Thackeray.