The Election Commission on Monday announced May 8 as the date for holding by-elections for 11 Lok Sabha seats, including Rae Bareli that was vacated by Congress President Sonia Gandhi in the wake of the office-of-profit controversy.
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The other seats that will have by-elections are Gwalior and Sidhi in Madhya Pradesh, Erandol and Jalgaon in Maharashtra, Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh, Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh, Palamu in Jharkhand and Robertsganj, Mirzapur and Bilhaur in Uttar Pradesh.
Sonia had quit the seat on March 23 following demands for her disqualification for holding an office of profit in the form of National Advisory Council chairpersonship.
The notification for the by-elections will be issued on April 13. The last date for filing nominations is April 20 while scrutiny of the same will take place on April 21. The last date for withdrawal is April 24. Counting will be taken up on May 11.
The commission also announced that by-election to the Deeg assembly constituency of Rajasthan would be held under the same schedule.
The Election Commission said the decision to hold by-election was not made in a "tearing hurry."
"It has been the consistent policy of the Commission that the by-elections shall be held at the earliest possible opportunity", Deputy Election Commissioner Anand Kumar told reporters in New Delhi.
Kumar said that the Commission approached the Supreme Court this morning to get its nod on conducting by-elections to ten parliamentary seats, which fell vacant in the wake of 'cash-for-query' scam.
"Since the Commission has already submitted a plan to the Court with regard to the ten seats which, the Court, would consider in July, we (Commission) decided to conduct elections to the Rae Bareli seat", he said.
Kumar also pointed out that the Commission does not want to hold elections in extreme heat after May as also during the monsoon and, therefore, decided to go ahead with the Rae Bareli polls in early May.
(With PTI Inputs)