Maharashtra, Haryana go o the polls on 15th October

Maharashtra's over 8.28 crore voters will vote in a single-phase, one-day poll on October 15 to elect its 13th 288-member assembly and its 18th chief minister. The results will be declared on October 19, and in case of a clear verdict, the new government may assume office around the time of Diwali, even though the existing assembly's term expires only on November 8. Of the 288 seats, 29 and 25 each have been reserved for SC and ST candidates. The bypoll for the parliamentary seat of Beed, vacated following the death of BJP leader Gopinath Munde, will also be held on October 15.
Each candidate this time has an expenditure limit of Rs 28 lakh, up from Rs 16 lakh in the last election in 2009.
Those who still haven't registered themselves as voters have only five days to do so.
The last date of nomination for candidates is September 27. As per law, the commission has to end the process of voter registration 10 days before this. This means the rolls will get closed on September 17. In the earlier elections, unregistered voters had 15 days to a month's time to enrol.
Voters will get to exercise the NOTA (none of the above) option like in the recent parliamentary elections, officials said.
An experiment this time is the VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail), a system where voters at around 3,942 polling stations in 13 seats across the state will get to verify if their votes have been cast correctly.
VVPAT is a method of providing feedback to voters using a slip (akin to one we get after ATM transactions) which tells you which candidate and party you have voted for.It helps verify that the vote has been cast and can thus detect possible election fraud or malfunction. It also helps in auditing the stored electronic results.

Haryana will also see a one phase poll on October 15, with results to be out on October 19. While the ruling Congress is eyeing a hat-trick in the 90-seat House, the BJP said it would wrest the power. VVPAT is being launched in phases.
Meanwhile, over 1.3 lakh of the voters whose names had been deleted from the rolls have re-registered themselves after the commission sent out 26 lakh letters to deleted voters through a major postal exercise. Nearly 4.5 lakh letters were delivered on the voters' given addresses. Since the Lok Sabha elections, nearly 23 lakh new voters have registered their names.