Maharashtra Elections: Independent candidate from Beed dies of heart attack at polling booth

Balasaheb Shinde, an independent candidate from Beed, Maharashtra, died on Wednesday, November 20, due to a massive heart attack while waiting for his turn to vote in the Maharashtra Elections 2024, according to multiple media reports. 

Shinde was rushed to a hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead.

Balasaheb Shinde dropped to the ground at Chhatrapati Shahu Vidyalaya voting centre in Beed. He was first taken to Kaku Nana Hospital in Beed and then to Chhatrapati Shambhaji Nagar Hospital, where doctors declared him dead. The body has been sent for post-mortem, the police told the news portal NDTV on Wednesday.

If an election candidate dies during an ongoing election, then the voting on the concerned seat can be postponed under Section 52, according to the Representation of the People Act 1951. 

Beed assembly seat was once the stronghold seat of the Nationalist Congress Party's (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar. After the split, Ajit Pawar represents one section of NCP which is in alliance with the BJP and Eknath Shinde led Shiv Sena.

In the state, the main competition is between the Mahayuti, led by the BJP, Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, and Ajit Pawar's NCP, and the Maha Vikas Aghadi, led by the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena, and Sharad Pawar's NCP alliance. 

In today's Maharashtra Election, 288 seats were voted on to elect a new government. The final votes will be counted on Saturday, November 23. All eyes are set on the exit poll results to be released after the polling is over in Maharashtra and Jharkhand today, even though the predictions have not been correct in the past. The polling will be over by 6 pm and the exit polls will start coming out at 6.30 pm. 

In the 2019 assembly elections, the exit poll results were, by and large, accurate for Maharashtra. The poll of polls based on six different exit polls predicted 213 seats for the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, and 61 for the Congress-NCP in 2019 elections.