Assembly polls: J&K to vote in three phases, Haryana on October 1, results on October 4

Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir will take place in three phases on September 18, September 25 and October 1, the Election Commission announced on Friday. In Haryana, the polling is scheduled for October 1.

The counting of votes in both places will take place on October 4.

The poll panel did not announce the dates for the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand that are expected to take place later this year.

The terms of the Legislative Assembly in Haryana will end on November 3, November 26 in Maharashtra and January 5 in Jharkhand. The polling process is expected to be completed before these dates.

Jammu and Kashmir was not a factor when polls were held in Haryana and Maharashtra in 2019, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said during the press conference on Friday.

“Depending on the requirement of [security] forces [during elections] which is higher in Jammu and Kashmir, we decided to conduct only two Assembly elections now,” he said.

He also cited heavy rainfall and upcoming religious festivals in Maharashtra as reasons for the poll panel deciding to conduct the Assembly elections in the state at a later stage.

The Model Code of Conduct came into force in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir with the announcement of the poll schedule. The code is a set of guidelines issued by the poll panel for political parties, candidates and the government to follow during an election. It sets guardrails for speeches, meetings, processions, election manifestos and other aspects of the polls.

A day before the poll schedule was announced, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha ordered a reshuffle of at least 198 officers in 12 hours in the civil administration and police department, The Hindu reported.

The National Conference party alleged that Sinha’s actions were “intended to undermine the integrity of the electoral process”.

“That the J&K administration had to call officers in the secretariat and police headquarter to work on Independence Day to order this massive reshuffle tells me they had absolutely no clue that the ECI would be announcing poll dates today,” party leader Omar Abdullah said on social media.

Abdullah added that the poll panel should look at the transfer orders from the prism of free and fair polls.

Responding to this, Kumar told reporters on Friday: “maybe our announcement came too early”.

“Among the transfers that we have checked, there is one superintendent of police and four deputy commissioners, others are not related to the field,” he said. “We are still checking the details.”

The election commissioner said that governments can order transfers before the model code of conduct comes into force. “However, if there is any information on disturbance of level playing field related to an official, the Election Commission takes action on it, irrespective of the timing of the transfer,” Kumar said.

Haryana

In the 2019 Haryana elections, the BJP won 40 seats in the 90-member Assembly. Having fallen short of the majority mark, it had formed the government with the support of the Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party. The Congress had won 31 seats.

Manohar Lal Khattar, who had been the state’s chief minister since October 2014, retained his position and Chautala became his deputy.

In March, weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP replaced Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as the chief minister. The ties between the Hindutva party and the Jannayak Janta Party also snapped, leading to Chautala’s resignation.

In the general elections, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and the Opposition INDIA bloc won five seats each. Haryana has 10 Lok Sabha constituencies. The BJP had won all 10 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

There will be 20,629 polling stations across 10,495 locations for 2.01 crore voters in the state.

Jammu and Kashmir

In August 2019, the BJP-led central government abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcated the state into two Union territories.

In December, the Supreme Court in its verdict on petitions challenging the Centre’s decision had directed the Union government to restore Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood “at the earliest and as soon as possible”.

The court also set September 2024 as the deadline for the Election Commission to conduct elections for the 90-member Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly that is to be restored.

There will be 11,838 polling stations across 9,169 locations in Jammu and Kashmir for 87.09 lakh voters, the Election Commission said on Friday.

The Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir will be the first in 10 years. In 2014, the People’s Democratic Party had won 28 seats of the 87 elected seats in the Assembly, followed by the BJP’s 25. The National Conference had won 15 seats and the Congress clinched 12. The People’s Democratic Party and the BJP had formed a post-poll coalition, making Mufti Mohammed Sayeed the chief minister.

After Sayeed’s death in 2016, his daughter Mehbooba Mufti succeeded him. However, the BJP withdrew support in June 2018, leading to the collapse of the government. This was followed by the governor’s rule and the president’s rule until the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.

The administration of the Union territory, with no Assembly in place, has been led by the lieutenant governor since 2019.

In the recent general election, the BJP won both Lok Sabha seats in the Jammu region and the INDIA bloc won two of the three constituencies in the Kashmir region. An Independent candidate won the remaining one seat.