Gandhinagar: Elections for 10,318 Sarpanchs(village heads), gram panchayat bodies and by elections for vacant gram panchayat seats will be held in the last week of December this year in Gujarat.

According to State Election Commission of Gujarat, polling for Gram Panchayat elections will take place on December 27 while counting will take place on December 29.

The polls will involve 91,002 wards and 24,454 polling stations.

In one of the biggest election seasons in 6 crore strong Gujarat state, Gram Panchayat polls will see involvement of 98,64,234 male voters and 90,22,758 female voters thus in total 1,89,46,992 or 1.89 crore or nearly 2 crore voters.

Gram Panchayat polls are held without election symbol, and therefore candidates are officially not considered as party candidate. Their victory also is not considered victory of particular party’s victory. However both main parties – BJP and Congress support desired candidates for the post of Sarpanch if election is unavoidable. The government led by then Chief Minister Narendra Modi had introduced ‘Samras’ scheme for more grants to Gram Panchayats that don’t witness elections, but make new panchayat body and its Sarpanch unanimously unopposed without election.

With announcement of gram panchayat polls today, the model code of conduct is effective in related areas with immediate effect.

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The gram panchayat (village panchayat) election in Gujarat will be held on December 27 in which the option of None Of The Above or NOTA will be used for the first time.

The election as usual will not be held on party basis ie the candidates will be individuals.

The model code of conduct has now come in to force in the gram panchayat areas concerned with the announcement of the polls.

Announcing the election schedule for 10318 gram panchayats across the state, Commissioner of the state election commission, Varesh Sinha said that the notification for it would be issued on December 5 with which nomination procedure would begin. The last date for filing nominations will be December 10. The scrutiny of the papers will be done on 12 th. Nominations could be taken back till December 14.

The election will be held on December 27 (Tuesday) from 8 am to 5 pm. Counting of votes will be done on December 29.
Sinha said that there will be a total of 25454 polling booths for the polls across 91,002 wards in which a total of 98,64,234 male and 90,22,758 female totaling 1,89,46,992 voters,would be able to participate. A voter will be able to cast his vote for the election of candidate of his choice for the post of Sarpanch as well as the Panchayat member.

To a query Sinha said that the restriction of model code of conduct will not be imposed on Seva Setu and Pragati Setu programmes of the state government meant to solve the problems of rural mass on the spot as these are administrative functions and not political ones.

He said that the related district administration would impose appropriate ban on misuse of social media during the elections in their respected areas.

Sinha said that the commission and district administration will also see whether any programme of the government falls under the ambit of model code.

‘It (the model code) has just come in to force and we will see to it that it is not violated by any government programme,’ he said.

Sinha also said that for the first time the results of the elections will also be put on the web site of the commission through links from the related districts.

Ballet papers will be used for the Panchayat polls. The EVM’s won’t be used for it.

DeshGujarat