The Election Commission of India (ECI) will announce the schedule for the Gujarat Assembly polls on Thursday. The announcement will be made at 12 noon. The poll panel has convened a press conference to announce the schedule.
The term of the Gujarat Assembly ends on February 18 next year.
Earlier, the ECI had announced the poll dates of Himachal Pradesh. Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said the voting in the state will take place on November 12 and the counting of votes will be held on December 8. In the elections to the 68-member Assembly with over 55 lakh eligible voters, the BJP will seek to overturn the three-decade convention of no ruling party returning to power by defeating the main opposition Congress in the hill state.
But the poll panel had refrained from announcing the poll schedule for the Gujarat Assembly.
“The Election Commission goes by convention in announcing poll schedules. It has decided to go by the convention which was last followed,” Kumar had told reporters when asked why Gujarat polls were not announced.
Kumar asserted that polls in one state would not affect elections in the other as “there is a gap of 40 days” in the qualifying dates of the state assemblies of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. The term of the Himachal Pradesh assembly ends on January 8, 2023.
There are speculations that Gujarat elections will still be held in the November-December period so that the votes can be counted on the same day as was the case in 2017. In 2017, the Commission announced elections to Himachal Pradesh on October 12 and to Gujarat on October 25. The counting of votes was held on December 18.
However, some opposition leaders claimed that announcing Gujarat elections later could allow the incumbent government to roll out more welfare schemes before the model code of conduct kicks in.
With PTI inputs
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