The Election Commission of India (ECI) will announce on Friday the schedule for elections to assemblies of some States and a Union Territory.
In the ECI’s early morning announcement that it will hold a press conference at 3 pm on Friday to make public dates of assemblies elections, the poll body has not named the States and the UT.
The assembly elections will become due in Jammu and Kashmir, owing to the Supreme Court-fixed deadline of September 30, and in Haryana, where the term of the assembly is ending in November.
Polls are also to be held in Maharashtra and Jharkhand later this year. The announcement may cover by-polls to 12 seats of the UP assembly which fell vacant after sitting MLAs became MPs in the recently held 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
But, it is learnt that ECI would likely stagger the four assembly polls. It may decide to hold the polls for J&K and Haryana together given that the government would need massive deployment in the Pakistan-neighbouring UT due to the spurt of militant activity likely spurred by Islamabad to disturb attempts to install a democratically government there.
That’s why it may be clubbed with polls for a smaller State like Haryana, apart from other reasons, sources said.
In 2009, however, the ECI had clubbed polls of Maharashtra and Haryana.
On Wednesday, the ECI held a meeting with outgoing Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and his other ministerial colleagues to talk about the security situation in poll-bound States, especially J&K.
This is after a delegation of the poll body had already done the rounds of Haryana and J&K to assess ground reality and talk to stakeholders including political parties to know their views on holding elections in their respective regions.