Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Elections to the nine vacant seats of the Maharashtra Legislative Council will be held on May 21, the Election Commission (EC) decided in a meeting on Friday.
The Commission will soon ask the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to appoint an officer to oversee whether the Council election process is compliant with the guidelines issued by the union government under the Disaster Management Act.
Simultaneously, the EC will also ask the Maharashtra government to depute an officer to check for compliance with the state’s health guidelines.
The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Baldev Harpal Singh will be the observer for the Council elections, said an EC official.
The poll panel will soon release the detailed poll schedule. The Commission, in the coming week, will devise the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for conducting polls in a pandemic. The SOP will lay down the precautions polling staff, and Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) will have to take while casting their vote.
EC’s decision comes hours after Maharashtra Governor BS Koshyari asked the Commission to hold elections to nine Legislative Council seats in the state “at the earliest”.
The Governor’s letter came two days after Chief Minister Uddhav Thakeray approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter. Thackeray called up the PM after the Governor sat on a recommendation made a month ago by the state government to nominate him to the Legislative Council.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, as per Article 164 (4) of the Constitution, needs to win from one of those seats to become a member of the legislature before a six-month deadline expiring on May 27.
Apart from the Governor’s letter, the Commission had also received representations from the Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP. Their letters stated that on account of “peculiar, extraordinary, unforeseen facts and circumstances”, Thackeray had not been able to get himself elected to the Legislative Council.