Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : Election Commission declared assembly polls date in Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh, but gave no dates for BJP-governed Gujarat. On November 9 election will held in Himachal Pradesh. The results for the election in Himachal Pradesh will be announced on 18 December.
Announcing the schedule, Chief Election Commissioner AK Joti said the filing of nominations will open on 16 October and the last date will be 23 October. Scrutiny will be done the next day and the last for withdrawal of candidates will be 26 October.
He said Electronic Voting Machines or EVMs with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system will be used for the Himachal Pradesh election. Also, for the first time, phone text messages to voters from candidates and political parties will have to get clearance from the Election Commission.
Himachal Pradesh has 68 assembly seats. The Congress had won 36 seats and the BJP 27 in the last assembly elections. Independent candidates had won five seats.
The official said the reason why voting date for Himachal Pradesh was fixed in November — which will result in a long gap before the counting — was the weather. “Himachal might get very heavy snowfall and severe weather from mid-November… so keeping that in mind, we are holding votes on November 9,” he said.
The Election Commission initially did not cite a reason for the delay in announcement of polling dates in Gujarat. Asked if it was due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally next week in Gandhinagar, Mr Jyoti denied it. “The Gujarat chief secretary wrote to us, saying due to unprecedented floods in the state, the relief work hasn’t been done and the state wanted time for that,” he said.
“Polling in Gujarat will take place before December 18 (counting day for Himachal) so that in no way the result of Himachal can affect the voting in Gujarat,” he said. “We will, in a few days, announce the dates for Gujarat election, but I can say for sure that voting in Gujarat will happen before December 18.”
The term of the 182-member Gujarat assembly ends on 22 January.
Himachal Pradesh will be the second state after Goa with 100 percent VVPAT coverage and for this the size of the voting compartments by 30 inches.
The decision to include VVPAT machines was the fallout of a huge uproar from the opposition parties after the last round of assembly elections earlier this year. After the BJP swept the elections in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the opposition parties alleged that the EVMs had been tampered with. The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail issues slips that show if a voter’s choice has been correctly recorded in an EVM and can be used in case the results of an election is questioned.
For the first time, the state will also have 136 booths managed entirely by women.