The Election Commission on Friday announced that the Himachal Pradesh Assembly election would be held on November 12 and counting of votes to be on December 8. The poll body didn’t announce any date for BJP dominated state Gujarat Assembly election.
The Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar defended its move of announcing only Himachal Pradesh schedule saying in Himachal there are cases of heavy snow fall in starting of winter itself. He added, last time in 2017, there was also a gap of 40 days in polling of votes in both the states, but counting was done on same day. Congress general-secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said, “obviously this has been done to give more time to the PM to make some mega promises and carry out more inaugurations. Not at all surprising”.
“The MCC (Model Code of Conduct) period, which gets extended, has been reduced from 70 days to 57 days and also if you see against the 2012 election announcement, when it was combined, there is a reduction of 81 days to 57 days. We don’t want that the entire election exercise continues for so long and that it doesn’t disturb anybody”. Kumar said.
The date of nomination for all 68 – Himachal Pradesh Assembly seats will be from October 17 to October 25, as per EC. There is a total of 55.07 lakh voters, including 1.86 lakh first-time voters and 1.22 lakh over the age of 80 years, would be voting this time.
The BJP in the face of CM Jairam Thakur is currently ruling in the state. In the last assembly election, BJP won 44 seats, Congress won only 21 seats out of total 68 seats in the assembly. It is going to be a tough battle for BJP in the Hill as Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of Kejriwal will also toss their luck for the first time.
image credits: Forbes
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