The Election Commission announced a 24-day polling window from November 7 to November 30 to kick off the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Mizoram, the final contest before the general election of 2024.
Chhattisgarh will be the only state to hold elections in two phases, with voting taking place in the Naxal-infested south on November 7 and the northern half of the state bordering Madhya Pradesh on November 17. Elections in the other three states will take place on a single day on November 7 in Mizoram, November 23 in Rajasthan, and November 30 in Telangana.
Just over 160 million voters are eligible to vote to choose their representatives for 679 assembly segments across the five states. Chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar, who was flanked by election commissioners Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel at the press conference to announce the poll dates, said this amounted to one-sixth of the country’s voters and assembly constituencies. Being the final round before the country goes into general election mode, these polls have often been dubbed the “semi-final”.
The analogy to sports may not be appropriate because the results of these battles have deviated from the "final" for the past 20 years, but the impact of the outcome on the morale of the participants, their troops, and competing narratives cannot be overstated. They are crucial as they cover three states from the Hindi belt where BJP and Congress are in a direct contest. Counting of votes will be held on December 3.