Wednesday 24 / April / 2024
New Delhi: Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam and union territory of Puducherry, with a lot of stakes for Congress and BJP in at least two of them each, will be held between April 4 and May 16, spread over 43 days.
It will be a single-day polling in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry on May 16 while it will be in six phases in West Bengal and two in Assam.
Counting of votes in all the states will be held on May 19, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi announced on Friday unveiling the poll schedule.
Congress is in power in Assam and Kerala while the BJP fancies itself as being a top contender in Assam in alliance with Asom Gana Parishad and some small outfits.
The BJP is seeking to emerge as a major player in West Bengal, where there are possibilities of Congress and Left joining hands directly or indirectly to take on Trinamool Congress.
Like in 2011, West Bengal will have polls spread over six phases.
The first phase to be held in Left wing extremism affected areas will have two polling dates -- April 4 and April 11.
The other phases will be held on April 17, 21, 25, 30 and May 5.
Assam will go to polls in two phases on April 4 and 11.
Zaidi said two dates in the first phase of polling in West Bengal have been decided keeping in mind the sensitive nature of the area and the availability of security personnel as they would also be deployed in Assam which is also considered sensitive.
He maintained that West Bengal will have polls in "overall" six phases.
While refusing to specify the strength of central forces deployed in West Bengal for the assembly polls, Zaidi said their number has increased as compared to 2011 polls.
He also said following delimitation exercise in Cooch Behar district of eastern Indian state of West Bengal, 16,000 people who became Indian citizens following of exchange of enclaves with Bangladesh, will be able to cast votes in the polls.
The law which allows EC to hold delimitation exercise to put these people in various assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies came into force on Friday morning.
The CEC said due to the delimitation exercise, Cooch Behar has been kept in the last phase of assembly polls to be held on May 5.
As part of measures to ensure neutrality of officials during polls, the EC has already ordered transfer of officials above the rank of sub inspectors and inspectors to be moved out of areas where they have served for over three years.
To poser on 'proximity' of certain officials in West Bengal with the ruling party there, he said he would not go into names of officials or any particular state, but the Commission will ensure that only those who are neutral and impartial are associated with poll-related work. "We will take appropriate action...we are keeping a watch," he said.
He was asked about duplication repeat duplication of voters in Kerala to which Zaidi said the Commission has used a latest software to delete multiple entries."We will now investigate whether it was an inadvertent mistake or a mischief," he said.
Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry assemblies have 126, 140, 234, 294 and 30 constituencies respectively.
The elections will also see for the first time a symbol, which has been created by the National School of Design, allotted to NOTA (None of the above) that will be placed at the bottom of the list of candidates.
Noting that voters are in the focus of the Commission, Zaidi said all booths will have seven basic facilities and there will also be all-women polling booths.
If possible polling centres will be set up in blind schools, leprosy centres to ensure inclusiveness.
Mobile squads will have GPS-fitted vehicles and be accompanied by central forces to ensure that they quickly attend to complaints.
A total of 170 million voters in the five states will use over 118,000 polling stations to cast their votes.
