Single-phase State Assembly elections in Maharashtra & Haryana on Oct 15, result on Oct 19

On 12^th September 2014, Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the dates of Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections. 

The Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath announced the dates in New Delhi.

The two states will go to the polls on October 15. The counting of votes will take place on October 19. 

In Maharashtra, 288 assembly constituencies will go to the polls while Haryana will vote for 90 seats. 

There will 16,244 polling stations are in Haryana and 90,403 in Maharashtra for this state assembly elections.

In Maharashtra of the 288 seats, 29 and 25 each have been reserved for SC and ST candidates.

As per ECI announcement, last date for filing nominations will be September 29 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination will be October 1. 

These state assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana will be held in in a single-phase i.e one-day poll on October 15.

In Maharashtra, over 8.28 crore voters will elect 13th state assembly and its 18th chief minister.

The bypoll for the parliamentary seat of Beed, vacated following the death of BJP leader Gopinath Munde, will also be held on October 15.

In this election, an experiment of VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) system will be carried in 13 seats across the state, where voters around 3,942 polling stations in will get to verify if their votes have been cast correctly.

Statistic of 2009 Assembly elections of Maharashtra

Sr no	Party	Contested	Won	Voteshare (%)
1	Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP)	119	46	14.0
2	Shiv Sena (SS)	169	44	16.3
3	Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)	143	13	5.2
4	Indian National Congress (INC)	170	82	21.1
5	Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)	113	62	16.4
6	Independent	1820	24	15.6
7	Others	772	17	12.8

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)

VVPAT is method of providing feedback to voters after casting their vote in Electronic Voting Machine (EVM).

At present, EVM's are used for voting and counting in elections. VVPAT will help to resolve the election disputes by providing physical verification of the votes in EVM's.

How Does VVPAT works?

In VVPAT printer is attached to the balloting unit of the voting machine.

When a voter casts his vote by pressing the button on EVM for a particular candidate, the printer generates a paper slip containing the serial number, name and symbol of candidate for whom the vote has been cast.

The paper slip remains visible to the voter through a window covered by glass on the printer  and after sufficient time gets automatically cut-off and falls in the box permanently attach below the printer.

How VVPAT is going to help?

This system enables the voter to verify and satisfy himself that the vote casted by him for the candidate of his choice has been actually recorded correctly for that candidate.

This will help to detect possible election fraud or malfunction and bringing transparency in voting mechanism, making elections free and fair.

The election commission of India for 1st time used EVM with VVPAT on 4th September 2013 for the by elections to the Noksen Assembly constituency in Nagaland.

VVPAT are manufactured by Bharat Electronics Ltd and Electronic Corporation of India (ECIL).

Cost of each VVPAT systems is Rs.12000, introducing VVPAT systems throughout country will cost around 2000 – 3000 crore rupees.

To allow VVPAT system with the EVM in by election, Government of India on August 14, 2013 amended the conduct of Election Rules, 1961.