The State Election Commission issued the notification for the three-tier panchayat elections here on Monday. The polling for these elections in all the districts of State barring Haridwar would be held in three stages on June 18, 21 and 24. The State comes under the ambit of Model Code of Conduct with the notification for these elections.
Talking to the media persons shortly after issuing the election notification the State Election Commissioner (SEC), Subardhan said that the Model Code of Conduct would not cover the urban areas, Haridwar district and works in disaster affected areas. He said that the elections in 12 districts, 89 blocks and 7,657 village Panchayats would be held in three stages and an electorate of 46,94,689 (23,13,900 female voters and 23,77,103 male voters ) would elect 49,337 members of village panchayats, 7,657 Village Pradhans, 3,054 members of Block Panchayats and 389 members of District Panchayat.
The SEC disclosed that nomination for the polls would be from June 2 to June 5, the scrutiny of the nomination papers would take place on June 6, 7 and 9 while June 10 is kept the date for withdrawal of the nomination papers.
The commission would allot the symbols to the contesting candidates on June 11 and the counting process for all three stages would start on June 27. Subardhan said since Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) would not be used in these elections the counting process makes take two to three days to finish. The election commission has set up 8,387 polling centres and 10516 polling booths for the Panchayat elections.
The SEC said that the commission would keep a close watch on the cases of violation of Model Code of Conduct and for this the commission would appoint one observer for every block. He added that the selection of sensitive and hyper sensitive booths would be done after the withdrawal of nomination papers on June 10 after consulting the district administration and police officials.