Election Commission To Announce Assembly Polls Schedule At 3 PM Today (image: Shaheel Malayil)

Election Commission of India (ECI) will announce schedule for Assembly elections on Friday at 3 PM. However, the poll panel did not specifically mentioned the states and it is expected that dates will be for Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jammu and Kashmir.

The term of the Haryana Legislative Assembly end on November and Maharashtra end on November 26. Besides, the Supreme Court judgement has stated that elections in Jammu and Kashmir has to be held by September 30, 2024.

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Jammu and Kashmir has been functioning without an elected government for five years now and assembly were last held in 2014. In 2019, the Modi government abrogated Article 370 , conferring special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcated the erstwhile state into 2 Union Territories  — Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. After the bifurcation, the Assembly polls could not be conducted due to various reasons, including a delimitation exercise in 2022. Hence, since 2019, the Union Territory has been under the rule of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha.

Recently, the poll panel has visited Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir to inspect the poll preparations and is yet to visit Maharashtra. Last week, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that the poll panel is “committed” to conducting elections in Jammu and Kashmir as soon as possible.

There are 90 Assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir. Among them,  74 are general constituencies, nine are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) candidates and seven for Scheduled Castes (SC) candidates.

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“We are committed to conducting polls in Jammu and Kashmir at the earliest and we will not let any internal or external forces derail the election. All political parties in Jammu and Kashmir are batting strongly for holding assembly elections as soon as possible,” PTI quotes Rajiv Kumar during a press conference in Jammu.

Traditionally, EC conducted elections in Maharashtra and Haryana together. However, there are assumptions that poll body may conduct it separately this time.

Meanwhile, the term of the legislative assembly of Jharkhand is scheduled to end in January 2025.