In Maharashtra, the BJP is contesting on 150 seats while the Shiv Sena has fielded its candidates on 124 seats. The Congress is contesting 146 seats, while its ally, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), is trying its luck on 117 seats.
According to the Exit Poll, the BJP-Sena alliance will win 210 seats out of 288, the Congress-NCP combine is likely to win 63 seats together, while other parties in the fray may get rest of the 15 seats.
The Exit Poll has found has found that the BJP-Sena partners may get 45% vote share, Cong-NCP are tipped to bag 36% while Others are projected to get 19%.
The Exit Poll has revealed that the BJP is likely to win absolute majority on its own.
Polling for all 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra was held on October 21 and counting of votes will take place on October 24. The state has over 8.9 crore eligible voters, of which the number of service voters stand at around 1.17 lakh. The main parties in the fray are the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Flashback
In 2004, 2009 and 2014, the Assembly elections were conducted just after the Lok Sabha Polls whereas in 1999, they were held simultaneously. The voting patterns in each year were a near replica of the Lok Sabha results. If this factor holds true, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance - which was able to bag 41 of Maharashtra's 48 parliamentary seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections - will be a sure winner on October 24.
The Congress, on the other hand, is not only struggling with its serious internal conflicts among the senior leaders but is also in the midst of an acute leadership crisis. The upcoming assembly elections will be a litmus test for Congress as it will show how united the party really is in a state where it was in power for three straight terms before 2014.
The NDA alliance is squaring off against the Congress-NCP combine in the crucial contest characterised by defections from the Opposition camp. The contest also has the undertone of the BJP battling for supremacy over the Sena, which considers itself as the "elder brother" in state politics, which wasn't the case in previous assembly polls.
In 2014 assembly polls, the BJP and the Sena had contested separately and won 122 seats and 63 seats, respectively, out of the total 288. In the Lok Sabha elections held this summer for the total 48 seats, the BJP bagged 23 seats while the Sena emerged victorious in 18 constituencies, with vote shares of 27.59 per cent and 23.29 per cent, respectively.