EC to announce Lok Sabha poll dates tomorrow at 3 pm

A press conference will be held to announce the schedule tomorrow

The Election Commission of India (ECI) will announce the dates for Lok Sabha election 2024 as well as some state assemblies at 3 pm on March 16. A press conference will be held to announce the schedule tomorrow.

The term of the present Lok Sabha ends on June 16 and a new House has to be constituted before that.

The general election is usually held in multiple phases across the 543 constituencies and the results are announced on a single day, usually in May. Last time, the Lok Sabha polls were announced on March 10 and held in seven phases beginning April 11 to May 19. Votes were counted on May 23.

On March 14, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led three-member committee picked Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu as election commissioners. The law ministry issued a notification announcing the appointments.

Sukhbir Singh Sandhu is a retired IAS officer of 1998 batch. He served as the chief secretary of Uttarakhand. He was appointed the chief secretary when Pushkar Singh Dhami became the chief minister in 2021. Earlier, Sandhu served as the chairman of the National Highways Authority of India. He also served as additional secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Gyanesh Kumar is a retired 1988-batch Kerala-cadre IAS officer. He served as secretary in the ministry of cooperation led by Amit Shah. Previously, he served as the secretary at the ministry of parliamentary affairs. Kumar retired from the services after his superannuation on January 31, 2024.

The vacancies had come up in the Election Commission after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey on February 14 and the sudden resignation of Arun Goel on March 8. The poll panel is headed by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar.

About 960 million voters will be eligible to cast their votes in the coming general election, which will be the biggest democratic exercise in the world.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping to continue its winning streak for a third term while a number of opposition parties, including the Congress, has formed a united front called INDIA to deny PM Modi another victory.

Interestingly, News18's Mega Opinion Poll conducted recently shows that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is headed for a historic mandate in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and is on course to achieve PM Modi's "400 paar" target.

There has also been talk around the recently submitted report over proposed One Nation, One Election idea, which if implemented in 2029, will mean several State assemblies could have truncated tenure to facilitate the synchronisation.

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