Preparatory meets over, EC all set to announce poll dates

NEW DELHI: With the Election Commission concluding its preparatory meetings for the general elections, including discussions with the home ministry on force logistics, polls to the Lok Sabha and a few state assemblies may be announced any day over the weekend or early next week.

While a few details of force deployment are still being fine tuned to finalise phasing of elections, indications are that the much-awaited announcement of the general election schedule may happen soon. Polling is likely to be conducted over multiple phases in April and May.

Counting may be timed in the third week of May. In 2014, polling was spread over nine phases between April 7 and May 12, followed by counting on May 16.

A senior EC functionary on Thursday rejected Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s recent charge that the commission was waiting for the PM’s official travel programme to conclude before announcing polls.

“The life of the last Lok Sabha was to end on May 31, 2014, and polls were announced on March 5, 2014.

However, the term of the current Lok Sabha ends only on June 3, 2019. If polls were announced by March 5, there would possibly be complaints about a longer duration of model code enforcement,” the functionary told TOI.