Assembly polls 2023 | Battling the odds

The electoral contests of November will decide the fate of several political veterans and also determine the tone if not the outcome of the general election in 2024

(Illustration: Siddhant Jumde)

Come November, and 161 million voters in five states—Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram—will exercise their franchise to elect their governments. Elections in these five states, which account for 83 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, are the last major battles before the general election in 2024. Of course, state elections do not necessarily influence, or presage, the outcome of the subsequent Lok Sabha election—in the 2018 assembly polls, for example, the Congress notched up victories in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, but won just three of the 65 Lok Sabha seats in these states in 2019.