Assembly elections will be held in Maharashtra in the second week of November. State Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has said so, so there is no problem in believing that the elections will be held at the same time. But will the Jharkhand assembly elections also be held along with it or will it be delayed by another month? This is the big question. This suspense has been created by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar himself.
The Election Commission team led by him visited Jharkhand on Monday. There Rajiv Kumar said that the elections in the state will be held on time. It is very unclear what is meant by elections on time. The time has come. When there are six months left for the elections, the ball is in the Commission’s court and after that whenever the elections are held, it is said to be on time.
In this sense, timely elections mean that elections should be held in Jharkhand in the second week of November along with Maharashtra. Keep in mind that the term of Maharashtra assembly is ending on 25 November. So, it is necessary to form the assembly there before that. But there is suspense in Jharkhand because the term of the assembly there is till 5 January 2025. Secondly, if timely elections are taken in the literal sense, then the last time that Jharkhand elections were held i.e. in 2019, in five phases between 30 November and 20 December. So the literal meaning of timely elections can be that elections should be held in December. But if the Election Commission does anything like this, then a big question will be raised on its credibility. What will be said if the commission, which is claiming itself to be ready for one country, one election, is not able to conduct elections of two states simultaneously!