ECI announces Kashmir polls after 10-year hiatus

New Delhi, NT Bureau: 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 BJP 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 said.

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. The announcement comes months after the Supreme Court upheld the Centre's decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir's special status.