The Election Commission announced Assembly Elections in the five states of Rajashtan, Delhi, MP, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.  The elections will be conducted in two phases in Chhattisgarh and at one go in other States.  Counting of the votes will be started on 8th December for all the States.  

The Election Commissioner V.S.Sampath announced the following on Friday.

For all 230 Assembly seats of MP, elections will be conducted on 25th November.
Elections in Rajasthan for the 200 seats will be conducted on December 1.
Elections in Delhi for its 70 seats will be conducted on December 4
Elections for Mizoram having 40 seats all will be conducted on December 4.
Chhattisgarh Elections will be conducted in two phases November 11th and 19th.
Elections for the Surat West Assembly Constituency in Gujarat and Yercaud Assembly Constituency in Tamil Nadu will be conducted on December 4th.

For the first time None of the Above (NOTA) is going to introduced as per the Supreme Court’s direction.  But the EC could not tell whether the provision of NOTA will be made in all the elections announced now.  In fact the provision is already existing for which the voter has to take a register kept for that with the Elecion officer and make entries in that which not only is a cumbersome process but also is prone to threat to the voter.  But now it is solved with the NOTA button in the AVMs.

Another Supreme Court’s direction that will be followed this time is that the candidates should give total information in the affidavit while filing the nomination.  Even if one item is left, the Returning Officer will send notice to the candidate and in the absence of response to it, the Returning Officer will reject the candidate’s nomination.  

The elections for these Assemblies are taken as people’s referendum for the general elections in 2014. EC said that election code is to be followed with immediate effect in those constituencies.

-SriJa