The Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced that the schedule for the Lok Sabha polls 2024 will be announced on Saturday, March 16. With the announcement of the schedule for the Lok Sabha elections, the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will also be implemented.
Along with the Lok Sabha election, the ECI will also announce the schedule of elections for some state assemblies including Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. The ECI said that the schedule will be announced at 3 pm on Saturday. On Friday, newly appointed election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu also took charge at ECI headquarters in New Delhi.
On Thursday, March 14, the Union government issued the notification for the appointment of the two election commissioners. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu from Punjab and Gyanesh Kumar from Kerala were appointed as the new Election Commissioners by a panel chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The committee convened to fill the vacancies left by the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey in February and the resignation of Arun Goel as the Election Commissioner on March 9.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was the only Opposition leader in the three-member panel. He questioned the absence of the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel and methodology behind shortlisting six names from a pool of over 200 candidates submitted to the search committee headed by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal.
(With inputs from IANS)