Governor favours holding Karnataka polls by May 28

New Delhi, Jan 23 (UNI) Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur today said he wanted elections to the state Assembly to be completed by May 28 as per the stipulations of the Constitution and the state would provide all help and administrative support needed for this.

Talking to newspersons here Mr Thakur said Central Chief Election Commissioner Gopalaswamy had recently visited the state to monitor the status of preparations to hold elections. ''During the discussions I had promised that the revision of voters list would be completed by February 7 and the process was on. The Deputy Commissioners in the districts were already on the job of revising the list,'' he said.

''Once the process is completed, the copies of the revised list of voters would be provided to the political parties alongwith list of 13 lakh deleted voters in the existing list to enable them to correct the mistakes at the earliest and the final list will be out by March 10. We want elections to be held before May 28 ie six months after the state was brought under the President's rule on November 29,'' he added.

Asked if he had discussed the issue of holding elections under new delimited Assembly constituencies, Mr Thakur said the issue did not figure in the discussions with the CEC. However, he was on record with the media that if the elections were to be held after delimitation of the constitutencies, it would take 'little more time'.

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