EC team on Gujarat submits its report

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the three-member Election Commission''s visit to Gujarat, the official team, which visited the state for an on-the-spot assessment of the situation gave its report to the full Commission on Thursday.
The nine-member official team, which toured Gujarat last week, reportedly said in its report that the situation was "not conducive" for the polls immediately.
Minorities constituting 12 per cent of the population, including 5 per cent still living in camps, might not be participating in the electoral process in the prevailing situation of fear, the team was believed to have said in its report.
It will be a rare visit of the full Commission, which is visiting a state to see the ground situation before taking a decision on the poll schedule.
A three-member body, then headed by T N Seshan and the other two Election Commissioners M S Gill and G V G Krishnamurthy, had visited Jammu and Kashmir just before the Assembly polls in 1996.
EC sources said that chief election commissioner J M Lyngdoh and election commissioners T S Krishnamurthy and B B Tandon were likely to return on Sunday and the Commission might firm up its opinion on the Assembly polls in the state by next week. They will visit Ahmedabad, Vadodara and some other affected areas for two to three days.
The ruling BJP, whose Chief Minister Narendra Modi dissolved the Assembly, wants polls before the October deadline when a constitutional requirement for a mandatory meeting of the Assembly may arise.
But it is being stiffly opposed by Opposition parties, who feel that time was not conducive for elections when the state was yet to recover fully from the worst communal riots in recent years in which nearly 800 people, mostly belonging to the minority community were killed.