Fifteen states and seven Union Territories will end polling within a day.
Fresh polls to elect a new government at the Centre will be held between April 16 and May 13, the Election Commission announced today. The votes will be counted on May 16. By May 17, the country’s 15th Lok Sabha will have taken shape.
The elections, to be conducted over five phases, will spread over a month. Fifteen states and seven Union Territories will end polling within a day, while Jammu and Kashmir as well as Uttar Pradesh will see the exercise in five phases, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswami said.
Announcing the much-awaited schedule for election of 543 members of the Lok Sabha, Gopalaswami reminded politicians, officials and governments that the moral code of conduct would come into immediate effect.
He said that the Commission had taken a serious note of illegal use of money power and said it would take steps to curb the menace.
Gopalaswami said elections to the assemblies in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim would also take place along with the Lok Sabha battle. Thus, the voters of these states will cast their votes twice on the same day. They will cast one vote each for an MP and and MLA.
All the candidates will be required to file two affidavits along with their nomination papers. The affidavits will include information on the criminal antecedents of the candidate, assets (including the moveable and immoveable properties of the candidate, spouse and dependents), liabilities of the candidate and his/her educational qualifications.
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Nomination papers will not be accepted unless accompanied by these affidavits. As before, candidates will be required to maintain a daily account of expenditure. A cell comprising experts from Income Tax Department will also be set up to deal with the information on poll expenses of the candidates, Gopalaswami said.
On the basis of the latest electoral rolls published by the Election Commission, the strength of the Indian electorate has gone up to 714 million from 43 million in 2004, he added.
Another unique feature of the election this time would be that of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies which would go to the poll, across the country, the maps of 499 have been re-drawn due to delimitation of the constituencies. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Manipur and Nagaland would see election on the basis of same territorial profile of the constituencies.
According to Gopalaswami, some 8,28,804 polling stations would be set up across the country as compared to 6,87,402 in the last election. The increase of 1,41,402 polling stations comes after the Commission instructed that any habitation with 300 voters should get a booth.
Besides, the Commission had drawn “vulnerability map’’ of the country to identify the small hamlets and villagers which had been subjected to intimidation in the past. The Commission has ordered booths for these places even when voters are less than 300.
Again, in the first ever such move, out of 543 Parliamentary constituencies, photo electoral rolls will be used in 522 constituencies as well as in all the Assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Orissa. Gopalaswami said photographs of some 82 per cent of voters across the country had been printed on the electoral roll. This means it would be well nigh impossible to impersonate voters, once, a common practice in Indian elections.