Maharashtra election live: Voters wait in a queue to cast their votes for the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections at a polling station in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Track live updates of Maharashtra exit poll results here

The high-stakes campaign concluded on Monday, with prominent leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra urging voters to turn out in large numbers.

Maharashtra is witnessing a showdown between two major political alliances: the ruling ‘Mahayuti’ coalition comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) which included the Indian National Congress ( INC), Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP).

Read more: Mahayuti or MVA? Voters in 288 seats to decide fate of 4,136 candidates today | Key points

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), a total of 4,136 candidates are in the fray for the Vidhan Sabha elections in the state, an increase of 27.7 percent over the number five years ago.

As many as 1,00,186 polling stations have been established at over 52,789 locations to accommodate the approximately 9.7 million eligible voters in the state. Among these polling stations there are 388 “pink booths” which are also manned specifically by women.

In a survey conducted between September 21 and October 6, 2024, Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and MIT-School of Government (MIT-SOG), they identified unemployment and inflation at the top of the list of voter concerns, with 24 percent and 22 percent of respondents who considered them their primary concerns.

Agricultural distress also emerged as a significant issue for rural voters, due to inadequate minimum support prices (MSP) for their production and rising input costs.

Another critical issue that has emerged is the demand for caste-based reservations, which has created friction, especially between the Maratha community and the OBC communities.

In light of NCP leader Baba Siddique’s death and a police encounter with a rape accused in Badlapur, several opposition parties have focused on the “deteriorating law and order situation” in the state under Eknath Shinde’s leadership.

Maharashtra Election 2024: Important Updates

• Uddhav Thackeray, the head of the Shiv Sena (UBT), accused the BJP of engaging in a “not jihad” to secure votes, citing allegations that BJP leader Vinod Tawde distributed money in Palghar. Tawde has refuted these claims, labeling them as a baseless publicity stunt.
• Supriya Sule of the NCP (SP) has filed a complaint with the Election Commission as well as a defamation suit after BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi alleged that she and Congress leader Nana Patole had illegally used cryptocurrency funds to rig the assembly elections in their favour.
• The ECI has banned political parties from publishing advertisements in print media on November 19 and 20 unless these advertisements have been pre-certified by the ‘Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC).
• The number of voters in Mumbai has crossed 1 crore, up from 98.95 lakh during the Lok Sabha elections.
• Navi Mumbai Police has launched a one-click feature for voters, offering information about polling booths, parking and crowd status through a QR code.
• A case has been registered against four unidentified persons for the attempted murder of NCP leader Anil Deshmukh, after he was injured in a stone-pelting incident while returning from a campaign event in Nagpur on November 18.
• Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) will remain closed today due to Maharashtra Assembly elections
• Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate Zeeshan Siddiqui, contesting from Bandra East, voted in the Maharashtra assembly elections on Wednesday. Siddiqui, who recently joined the NCP, paid tribute to his late father, Baba Siddiqui, who was tragically killed, and said it was the first time he voted alone.