An all-party meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan here on Friday decided to request the Election Commission of India (ECI) to call off the Assembly bypoll in the Chavara and Kuttanad constituencies in November.
The LDF and UDF agreed to petition the State Election Commission (SEC) to advance the elections to local bodies “minimally and not inordinately” given the COVID-19 situation.
However, the BJP did not agree to the proposal to advance the local body polls. BJP State president K. Surendran said the LDF and the UDF were scared to face the electorate. Scandals had hit the ruling front and the UDF was in disarray due to infighting, he said.
Mr. Vijayan said the model code of conduct for the Assembly elections would come into force on March 10, 2021. The newly-elected MLAs would not be able to do justice to their offices in their three-month tenure.
The entire government machinery was committed to fighting the pandemic.
The parties felt that it would not be optimal now to re-purpose the administration in two districts for the conduct of bypolls.
Mr. Vijayan said the SEC was constitutionally bound to conduct the local body polls and install new local self-government institutions (LSGIs) by November 12. Hence, the local body elections were unavoidable.
The government could not postpone them inordinately. In contrast, the Assembly bypolls were inessential given the impending State elections in mid-2021.
The pandemic situation in the State was grim. The threat of the contagion was the sole factor deterring the conduct of local body polls as per the timetable. The State has to ensure that senior citizens, people in containment zones or quarantine and COVID-19 patients get the right to exercise their franchise safely and securely.
An official said that various political parties had earlier weighed the proposal to make the postal ballot and proxy voting provision widely accessible to the electorate in the wake of reports that the pandemic could depress voter turnout. The government might call another all-party meeting to debate the proposal, he said.