New Delhi- The Election Commission of India (ECI) has said that the schedule for the 2024 general elections to Lok Sabha and some state assemblies would be announced on Saturday, March 16, at 3 p.m. The ECI will hold a press conference in New Delhi, which will be live-streamed on social media.
The ECI had completed its national survey of poll preparedness in every State, ending its survey with a tour of Jammu and Kashmir this week.
The term of the present Lok Sabha ends on June 16 and a new House has to be constituted before that.
The term of the assemblies in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha is coming to an end on various dates in June.
Last time the Lok Sabha polls were announced on March 10 and held in seven phases beginning April 11. Votes were counted on May 23.
In 2014 also, the EC had sent invites for its poll schedule press conference a day in advance. The invite was sent in the evening for the presser to be held early the next day.
Nearly 97 crore people are eligible to cast vote in the upcoming polls at over 12 lakh polling stations.
In the last parliamentary polls, the BJP had won 303 seats while the Congress got 52 seats. It could not muster enough numbers to claim the position of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
The 2024 parliamentary polls are being seen as a do or die battle for the opposition INDIA bloc.
According to a News 18 opinion poll, the BJP-led NDA is headed for a “historic mandate” in the upcoming polls.
The opinion poll claimed that the NDA is set to win 411 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha with the BJP alone clinching a record 350 seats.
According to an opinion poll survey by ABP-CVoter, the INDIA bloc is likely to get only six seats in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
Regional and national parties have already begun announcing their candidates for the elections to the 543 Parliamentary constituencies. The BJP has so far released two lists of 267 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, while the Congress announced the names of 82 candidates over two lists.
Meanwhile, the ECI on March 14 made public the data on electoral bonds it received from the State Bank of India and has also sought the return of the electoral bonds’ documents handed over to the Supreme Court in sealed cover/sealed boxes.
Two New ECs Assume Charge
Newly appointed election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu assumed charge on Friday.
The former bureaucrats were appointed as election commissioners on Thursday.
They are the first ones to have been appointed as members of the poll panel after the new law on appointment of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and ECs came into force recently.
Welcoming them, CEC Rajiv Kumar spoke about the significance of their joining at a historic point when the Election Commission is all set to conduct Lok Sabha elections, a spokesperson said.
The vacancies had come up in the Election Commission after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey on February 14 and the sudden resignation of Arun Goel on March 8.
Gyanesh Kumar and Sandhu, both 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, belonged to the Kerala and Uttarakhand cadres, respectively.
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