Gujarat assembly polls in December: EC

Ahmedabad, Oct 10 (IANS) The Election Commission on Tuesday said the assembly elections in Gujarat will be held in December.

"I cannot confirm the dates yet, but the (assembly) elections will be held in December," Chief Election Commissioner A.K. Joti told the media here.

The last elections to the 182-member assembly were held in December 2012.

Joti announced setting up of at least one polling booth across all 182 constituencies to be manned completely by women, be it as polling officials or as security personnel.

Electronic Voting Machines with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails would be used across all 50,128 polling stations in 28,639 polling locations in the state, said Joti who is leading a team of EC officials on a two-day visit to Gujarat to review preparedness ahead of the elections.

VVPAT enables a voter to see the candidate's name/symbol in favour of whom he has cast his/her vote.

"Political parties have welcomed the introduction of VVPAT and requested that the time frame for voting should be rationalised to achieve maximum voting," he said.

The CEC said Gujarat has 43.3 million registered voters as on September 25, with 22.5 million (51.96 per cent) males and 20.7 million (47.80 per cent) females.

During the visit, the commission officials met representatives of various political parties, administrative and police officials as well as enforcement agencies.

The Election Commission said its main aim was to ensure free elections with adequate security.