The Election Commission will set the ball rolling for the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry with their Governors/Lieutenant Governor issuing the notification on Saturday and thus opening nominations.
The polls will be held on April 13. Counting will be taken up on May 13.
In Assam, the Governor on Friday issued the notification for the second phase of elections for the State's Legislative Assembly in which 64 of the 126 constituencies will go to polls on April 11. In the first phase, for which notification was issued on March 10, the poll will be held in 62 Assembly segments on April 4.
EC sources said the draft poll notifications had already been despatched to Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry and they would be published in the gazette on Saturday after getting approval of the respective Governors/Lt. Governor.
In Tamil Nadu, the poll will be held for 234 constituencies.
It will be for 140 segments in Kerala and 30 in Puducherry.
The last date for filing nominations is March 26 and on March 28 the papers will be scrutinised.
The papers will be allowed to be withdrawn, if necessary, till March 30.
In West Bengal, for the 294-member Assembly, the poll will be held in six phases on April 18, 23, 27, May 3, 7 and 10 and the notification for the first phase, which will cover 54 constituencies, will be issued on March 24. A total of about 14.39 crore people and a few thousand non-resident Indians are eligible to vote in the four States and Puducherry with West Bengal having the highest voters' strength of 5.60 crore, followed by Tamil Nadu – 4.59 crore, Kerala – 2.29 crore, Assam – 1.81 crore and Puducherry – 8.05 lakh.
Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi and Election Commissioners V.S. Sampath and H.S. Brahma personally monitored the pre-poll arrangements by touring Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala in the last 10 days and expressed satisfaction over the arrangements being made.
