EC announces polls in J-K, Haryana, here are the dates

Assembly elections will be held in Jammu and Kashmir after a decade in three phases from September 18, setting the stage for the people of the union territory to elect a government after the scrapping of Article 370 in 2019.

The Election Commission also announced that elections to the 90-member Haryana assembly will be held on October 1 and results for both the polls will be declared on October 4.

The two assembly elections will be the first popularity test for the Bharatiya Janata Party and the INDIA bloc following the Lok Sabha polls.

The three-phase elections to the 90-member Jammu and Kashmir assembly will be held on September 18, September 25 and October 1, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar told a press conference in the presence of Election Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu.

After suffering reverses in the Lok Sabha polls, including in Haryana, the BJP is keen to regain political momentum by retaining power in the state and putting up a strong show in Jammu and Kashmir, where its strongholds have been traditionally confined to the Jammu division.

The Congress, however, is hoping to continue with its political revival by toppling the BJP from power in Haryana after 10 years and inflicting losses on its rival in the Jammu region where the two parties are the main contestants.

Two regional parties, the National Conference and People's Democratic Party, have won most of the seats in the Kashmir valley between them in past elections. Both parties are part of the INDIA bloc along with the Congress but all three of them fought separately in the Lok Sabha elections, a scenario likely to persist in the assembly polls too.

In the 2019 polls in Haryana, the BJP had 40 of its 90 seats and formed the government in alliance with the Jananayak Janta Party.

In the last assembly in J and K in 2014, the BJP had won 25 of its 87 seats and had joined hands with the PDP to form government under the leadership of the regional party's leader Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Its assembly now has 90 seats following delimitation.

CEC Kumar said assembly elections in Maharashtra, which were held along with Haryana in 2019, will be announced later due to security requirements for Jammu and Kashmir.

He said four elections are due this year and by early next year and since Jammu and Kashmir was not in the picture last time (2019-20) the Commission decided to group two assembly elections together.

Besides Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana, elections are due in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi.

Kumar said the next set of elections will be announced after the completion of the polls in Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana.

While 24 seats will go to the polls in the first phase in Jammu and Kashmir, elections will be held in 26 seats and 40 seats in the second and third phases respectively.

The last assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir in November-December 2014 in five phases.

The announcement by the Election Commission comes months after the Supreme Court upheld the Centre's decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir's special status and directed that assembly elections be held by September 30.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah welcomed the announcement of assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir and said the polls will further strengthen the roots of democracy and open the doors to a new period of development for the region.

While referring to polls in Jammu and Kashmir, the CEC told reporters that in the Lok Sabha elections, people in the UT reposed faith in ballot and rejected bullets and boycotts.

He said the voter turnout in parliamentary elections in UT proved people's faith in democracy.