BTC polls on Apr 8, counting on 11

Guwahati: The election to the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) will be held on April 8 and the counting of votes will take place on April 11, the State Election Commission said here on Wednesday.
The autonomous council, set up under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, has 46 members of which 40 are elected and the remaining six are nominated by the governor.
Of the 40 seats, 30 are reserved for Scheduled Tribe, while five are reserved for non-STs and another five constituencies are open to all groups.
This is the third election to the council. The Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), which was formed out of the disbanded Bodo Liberation Tiger in 2003, has been in power since its inception. According to the final electoral rolls, voters in the BTAD areas have increased to 20,64,099 from 18,64,057 in 2010.
There are 10,58,889 male voters and 10,05,210 female voters. The number of polling booths has also increased to 2,778 from 2,678 in 2010.
The election will be held in the four Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri and is expected to be a fierce one as two big national parties — Congress and BJP — will fight the election against the ruling BPF.
State election commissioner H N Bora, while announcing the election schedule, said the process of filing nomination papers starts from Thursday and will end at 3pm on March 25. “This time, we have raised the expenditure ceiling for candidates from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh,” Bora said.
The scrutiny of the nomination papers will be done on March 26 and the last date of withdrawal of candidature is March 28. Voting will be done through ballot papers and not EVM, Bora said.
“The model code of conduct comes in force from Wednesday. No government can announce any scheme for BTC during the period of the model code of conduct within and outside the BTAD area,” the commissioner said.