Jharkhand assembly election dates to be announced today

The Election Commission of India will announce the dates for election to the Jharkhand assembly today. The election commission is expected to make the announcement Friday evening. There were speculations that the EC would announce schedule for the Delhi Assembly elections along with that of the Jharkhand, but the EC invite only refers to poll schedule for Jharkhand.

Jharkhand is currently ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The term of the 81-seat Jharkhand Assembly ends on January 5 next year.

Among the primary challenges that chief minister Raghubar Das will face in this election will be crime -- especially lynching and mob violence -- and dissatisfaction within the BJP over how he has managed the government in the last five years.

The BJP has been in power in Jharkhand for most of the state's existence. The party was in power in Jharkhand in the first ten years since its formation. The Congress-led UPA ruled the state from 2009 and 2014. In 2014, the BJP returned to power and Raghubar Das took oath as the chief minister.

Elections to the Jharkhand assembly will come weeks after the Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections. The BJP managed to win a majority in Maharashtra along with its ally Shiv Sena while in Haryana it cobbled together a post-election tie-up with Dushyant Chautala's Jannayak Janata Party to cross the majority mark.

While the BJP managed to be victorious in both the elections, the polls were seen as a scare for the party -- the BJP lost a significant number of seats in Maharashtra compared to its 2014 tally while in Haryana it failed to cross the halfway mark on its own.

The BJP's losing seats in Maharashra is being seen as the reason the state still does not have a government -- ally Shiv Sena is playing hardball, demanding that the BJP agree to rotate the chief minister's post between the two parties, a demand the BJP is unwilling to agree to.

(With inputs from PTI)