About Elections
See full coverage on Loksabha election 2024 dates live
With several elections lined up in the coming months, including the Lok Sabha polls in April-May, 2024 promises to be a high-voltage year with a lot of political action in store. The country will officially get into the election cycle with the Lok Sabha polls kicking off in April-May. The elections will be held to constitute the 18th Lok Sabha. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP-led NDA is eyeing a record third straight term in power after its stellar success in both 2014 and 2019 general election.
Several opposition parties, including the Congress, have come together under a united front called INDIA to dent the BJPs prospects in the upcoming elections. The opposition parties have been negotiating seat-sharing deals across several states to pose a united challenge to the BJP. The BJP is exuding confidence of retaining power yet again, with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi setting an ambitious target of over 400 seats for NDA and 370 for the saffron party in the upcoming elections. Besides the Lok Sabha polls, several other state elections are also lined up in 2024. Voting will take place in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim simultaneously with the national polls in April and May. Later this year, elections will take place in the states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand.
The elections will be keenly watched since both Maharashtra and Jharkhand have witnessed major political shake-ups since the previous assembly polls. In Maharashtra, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction broke away from the Uddhav Thackeray-led party, leading to the fall of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress Maha Vikas Aghadi. Shinde then formed a fresh government with BJP. In Jharkhand, the JMM-Congress alliance has managed to retain its grip on power but saw a major setback after the resignation of chief minister Hemant Soren following his arrest in a money laundering case.
Hemant was replaced by party leader Champai Soren, who managed to keep the government afloat after a floor test earlier this year. Moreover, elections are also expected in Jammu and Kashmir this year, which was split into two Union territories after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. The erstwhile state has been under President rule since December 2018. There has been a strong push by the state parties for holding the polls in J&K since the delimitation of seats was concluded there in May last year. It was followed by a special revision of the electoral rolls based on the newly-delimited constituencies.
