The Election Commission of India announced the voting dates for Maharashtra this afternoon. Voting in Maharashtra will take place on November 20 and votes will be counted three days later on November 23. Meanwhile, Jharkhand will vote in two phases on November 13 and 20. Counting for both states will take place on November 23. The Chief Election Commissioner said with elections, were are setting gold standards, referring to the ‘free and fair elections’ in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir.

In 2019, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising a then unified Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), along with the Congress, had won 154 of 288 seats. This time, the Shiv Sena and NCP split into two factions. 

Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) is ready to lock horns with the BJP. In the 2019 elections, JMM won 30 seats and formed the government with the Congress, which has won 16 seats.

Here are the Live Updates on the big story:

Exit polls create expectations that cannot always be met and before getting hopes up, one should look into the specifics of the exit poll — like where it was held and what was the sample size, the Election Commission said today while announcing the poll dates for Maharashtra and Jharkhand. This, the Commission said, is an occasion where the media must introspect and correct itself.

“We don’t govern exit polls – but there is a need to introspect – what was the sample size etc. There are bodies that self-regulate. Time has come that the concerned bodies will do some self-regulation,” added Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar.

Pointing out that the “gap between expectation and reality can lead to frustration”, he said one cannot expect the trends to match the exit polls. 

In this context, he also clarified the timing of the trends announcements, which featured in the huge row during the counting of votes from Haryana last week. 

The Congress, which lost the election it was expected to win comfortably, had complained that the time lag between the announcements and the live counting in progress at various centres. 

What amplified the shock for the party was that it was ahead in the early trends before its score nosedived. The Congress had questioned it, declaring that it would pursue the matter. 

“It is not as if the trends exist to justify the exit polls,” Mr Kumar said today. 

“Results start coming around 8:05 or 8:10 in the morning – this is nonsense,” he said. “The counting begins at 8:30 – we put out counting results every 2 hours starting 9:30 am. It takes another half-hour for it to reflect on the official site. Now people at the counting booth will get the current figure,” he added, explaining the mismatch. 

The counting of a single round cannot take less than 30 minutes, he said. So it is usually 8.50 before the results of the first round is out and it is up on the Election Commission website by 9.30. 
 

Five flights, including Air India’s Delhi-Chicago route, faced bomb threats online, prompting diversions and security drills. The Air India flight was diverted to Canada for checks, while other flights from Air India Express, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air also underwent security inspections. Recent hoax threats have signaled ongoing security challenges in aviation.