Notification of polls in Arunachal on 15 March

Itanagar: Notifications for the 9 April elections to the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly along with the Lok Sabha polls will be issued on 15 March, state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Chandra Bhusan Kumar said today. Arunachal Pradesh Governor Lt Gen (Retd) Nirbhay Sharma recommended dissolution of the state Assembly on March 6 after accepting the recommendation of the state cabinet. [caption id=“attachment_1429623” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] The tenure of the Arunachal Assembly ends on November 4 this year. “Notification for simultaneous polls will be issued on March 15 and last date for filing nominations has been fixed for March 22,” Kumar told a press conference here. While scrutiny of papers would be done on March 24, the last date of withdrawal of candidature has been fixed on 26 March, he said. Kumar said the Election Commission announced the date of Assembly elections last night and appointed Santosh Kumar as Excise Observer to check use of liquor by political parties to woo voters during the elections. “The ECI has already appointed K S Dhatwalia and D M Kakadia as awareness observer for Western and Eastern parliamentary constituencies respectively and they are touring all Assembly constituencies to create awareness among the voters. “Altogether 7,53,170 electorates including 3,77,272 women would exercise their franchise in 2,158 polling stations in the state. 664 polling stations in the state are inaccessible, while eight polling stations have less than ten voters, 20 have less than 20 voters and 105 polling stations have less than 50 electors,” the CEO said. PTI