Ending all speculation, the State election department on Wednesday said that the election to the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) will be held on April 8. Assam Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Harendra Nath Bora said this while adding that the Model Code of Conduct has come into effect with the department issuing the notification on Wednesday. The counting of votes will be held on April 11, Bora said.
The filing of nominations for the polls will start from Thursday and that the department has fixed March 25 as last date for filing nominations for the BTC polls. The last date for withdrawing the nominations is March 27 and the department will finalise the list of contenting candidates after holding a scrutiny on March 28.
It may be mentioned here that although there are 46 territorial council constituencies in the BTC, elections will be held for 40 seats while the Assam Governor will nominate six members to the council from the unrepresented communities. The BTC, a territorial council comprising four districts of Assam-Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri, came into existence in 2003 as part of signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Central Government, the State Government and the Bodo liberation Tigers (BlT) members.
Elections were held to the council for the first time in 2003 and the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) led by BlT chief Hagrama Mohilary won the majority in the council and ran the administration. The BPF managed to secure the majority seats in 2010 elections and have been running the administration in the council. There are a total of 20,64,099 eligible electorates in the four districts of BTAD and voting will be held in 2,778 polling stations across the BTAD. There are 10,58,889 male electorates.
There is a 10.73 per cent increase in the number of voters in BTAD this time. In 2010, the total electorates were 18,64,057. Polling was held across 2,678 polling stations in the BTAD which consists of four districts.