Congress constitutes screening committee for Assam elections with Prithviraj Chavan as chairman

March 2: A 9-member screening committee was formed by the Congress with former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan as chairman for the forthcoming Assam Assembly Elections, 2021. The Committee also comprises of Kamaleshwar Patel and Dipika Pandey Singh as its members.

Apart from these three, there are six more ex-officio members in this screening committee. They are Congress’ Assam in-charge Jitendra Singh Alwar, Assam Congress president Ripun Bora, Assam CLP leader Debabrata Saikia, All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretaries – Anirudh Singh, Prithviraj Prabhakar Sathe and Vikash Upadhaya.

The screening committee will screen the probable candidates for the assembly polls and make recommendations to the Central Election Committee. Chaired by the party President, the Central Election Committee will make the final decision on party candidates. Congress is striving hard to recover the lost power from the BJP.

With the last date of nomination for the three-phase Assam Assembly Elections knocking at the doors, the political parties are busy drafting the final list of the candidates. The schedule for the forthcoming Assam Assembly Elections, 2021 was declared by Sunil Arora, 23rd Chief Election Commissioner of India (CEC) in an important press conference on 26 February. Assam will go for the assembly polls in three phases on 27 March, 1 & 6 April, 2021. The voting will take place from 7 am to 6 pm. The counting of the votes will take place on 2 May, 2021.

• 1st phase : 27 March, 2021(47 constituencies). The issue of nomination shall be till 2 March, last date of nomination 9 March, scrutiny of nomination 10 March & last date of withdrawal of nomination 12 March.
• 2nd phase :1 April, 2021 (39 constituencies). The issue of nomination shall be till 5 March, last date of nomination 12 March, scrutiny of nomination 15 March & last date of withdrawal of nomination 17 March.
• 3rd phase : 6 April, 2021 (40 constituencies). The issue of nomination shall be till 12 March, last date of nomination 19 March, scrutiny of nomination 20 March, last date of withdrawal of nomination 22 March.

The term of the 126-member (with 8 in SC category and 16 in ST category) Assam Legislative Assembly will expire on 31 May, 2020. Due to COVID-19, every polling station this time will have a maximum of 1000 voters. So naturally, the number of polling stations have been increased. Further, all officials and staff connected with the election will be vaccinated. The elections will be held as per the Covid protocol.