EC officials to visit poll bound Assam today

New Delhi, Jan 18: Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora along with Election Commissioners Sushil Chandra and Rajiv Kumar will visit Assam and West Bengal beginning Monday to take stock of preparations for assembly polls to be held in the next few months.

The commission would reach Guwahati on Monday evening and leave for Kolkata on January 20 evening according to the programme decided last week, official sources said.

Deputy Election Commissioner Sudip Jain was in West Bengal last week to meet officials. This was Jain''s second visit to West Bengal.

Another EC official was in Assam to take stock of the situation there. They had briefed the commission about their visits to the two states on Friday.

It is usual for the commission to visit poll-bound states before announcing the schedule of Assembly elections. But it had visited Bihar after announcing the dates for the recently concluded elections.

The terms of the legislative assemblies of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry are coming to an end on different dates in May and June this year. The Assembly elections are likely to take place sometime in April and May.

The Election Commission had last week discussed with Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla the availability and requirement of central security forces for the upcoming Assembly elections.

The meeting held at the EC headquarters here was "primarily to discuss requirement vis-a -vis availability of central armed police forces, and related matters, for the upcoming assembly elections to the states of Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and the Union Territory of Puducherry," the poll panel had said.