NEW DELHI, 1 February 2003 — The Election Commission yesterday issued the formal notification for assembly polls in four states in February, setting the ball rolling in the battle for the ballot.
Himachal Pradesh in the north as well as Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in the northeast will go to the polls on Feb. 26.
The Himachal Pradesh Assembly was dissolved Wednesday ahead of the elections. The term of the 68-member assembly ends on March 11.
The term of the 60-member Meghalaya assembly ends on March 8, and those of Nagaland and Tripura, also with 60 seats each, terminate on March 22.
Nominations can be filed till Feb. 7 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is Feb. 10. The hundreds of thousands of votes cast will be counted on March 1. Electronic voting machines will be used in all the states. These will be the first elections in the country this year and the most important poll battle since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won in Gujarat in December. The party yesterday released the list of candidates for the four states going to poll.
Releasing the list, the newly appointed general secretary of the party, Pramod Mahajan said that the list was prepared in consultations with the party president, the prime minister, his deputy and other senior leaders of the party. “We tried to accommodate the deserving persons in the list,” he added.
The list includes the names of 66 candidates for Himachal Pradesh, 15 for Tripura, 16 for Nagaland and 29 candidates for Meghalaya Assembly constituencies. Mahajan ruled out the possibility that the BJP will tie-up with Sukh Ram’s Himachal Vikas Party in the Himachal Pradesh and announced, “We will go it alone in the state.”
Polling will take place in June in three high altitude Himachal Pradesh constituencies of Lahaul Spiti, Kinnaur and Pangi Bharmaur after the snow melts.
By-elections will also be conducted in eight assembly constituencies of seven states — two in Uttar Pradesh (Gauriganj and Haidergarh) and one each in Jammu and Kashmir (Pampore), Tamil Nadu (Sattankulam), Jharkhand (Poriyahat), Karnataka (Humnabad), Maharashtra (Bhokarden) and Assam (Ratabari).
The BJP also released the list of five candidates for the by-elections for the assembly seats in four states which include: One each for Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Assam, while for two seats of Uttar Pradesh.
