EC announces holding of by-elections for four LS and 4 SLA seats

New Delhi, Mar 13 (UNI) The Election Commission (EC) today announced the holding of by-elections to fill the four casual vacancies in the Lok Sabha (LS) and four State Legislative Assemblies (SLA) vacancies on April 12, this year.

According to an EC notification here today, the LS elections will be held for four seats spread over two States of Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Uttar Prdesh (UP), while the SLA elections will also be held for four seats across Orissa, West Bengal and UP.

The Lok Sabha elections will be held for Betul in MP and Azamgarh, Khalilabad and Meerut in UP, while the contests for the SLA seats will be held for Laxmipur (ST) in Orissa, Kharba in West Bengal and Bilgram and Colonelgang both in UP.

The Commission has made adequate arrangements of the security forces after taking various factors for holding peacefull elections to enable voters to cast their votes fearlessly without any fear.

The notification for all these elections will be issued on March 19 and the last date for filng of nominations by candidates is March 26, 2008.

The scrutiny of nominations will be held on March 27 and the last date of withdrawal of nominations by candidature is fixed for March 29.

The counting of votes will be taken up on April 16 and the date of completion of the election process is fixed for April 18.

The Commission has decided to use Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in these by-elections in all the polling stations. Adequate numbers of EVMs have been made available and all steps taken to ensure that the poll is conducted smoothly with the help of these machines.

The Commission has decided that the voter's identification shall be mandatory in these by-elections at the time of poll. In order to ensure that no voter is deprived of his/her franchise, if his/her name figures in the Electoral Rolls, separate instructions will be issued to allow additional documents for identification of voters at the time of poll in these bye-elections.

The Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will come into force with immediate effect i.e 13 March, 2008 in the districts in which the whole or any part of the Parliamentary/ Assembly Constituencies going for by-elections are included. The MCC will be applicable to all candidates, political parties and state governments. The MCC will also be applicable to the Union Government as far as these states are concerned.

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