Draft delimitation proposals: Full ECI team set to hear stakeholders

 STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The full set of the Election Commission of India, comprising the Chief Election Commissioner and two election commissioners, will be in Guwahati for the hearing of all stakeholders on the draft delimitation proposals of parliamentary and Assembly constituencies in Assam.

Though the hearing will be a three-day affair on July 19, 20, and 21, four officials of the Election Commission of India (ECI) will arrive in Guwahati tomorrow for the groundwork. Officials of the Election Department of Assam will assist the ECI team, besides providing all logistical support during the hearing.

According to sources in the State Election Department, the ECI team will have 14 members, including CEC Rajiv Kumar, Election

Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey, Election Commissioner Arun Goel, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Dharmendra Sharma, and Deputy Election Commissioner Hirdesh Kumar. The CEC and the two election commissioners will arrive in Guwahati on July 19 and go to Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra at Panjabari.

Since the ECI received over 500 memoranda over the draft proposals, it has decided to club the memoranda with common issues together for the convenience of hearing. The ECI has asked the State Election Department to make the respective deputy commissioner club together the stakeholders raising the same issues. The deputy commissioners will call the stakeholders raising common issues to minimize the number of members representing them.

Of course, the ECI will hear the representations of the registered and recognized national and state political parties and the registered but unrecognized political parties separately on July 20. The state has ten political parties in each of these two categories.

The ECI will hear from the student organizations that have submitted their memoranda to the ECI over the draft proposals in the district-wise arrangement already made.

The ECI team will hear the memoranda of seven districts in the afternoon of July 19, 15 districts on July 20, and nine districts on July 21.

The media will be barred during the hearing. However, the ECI will address the media after the hearing on July 21.

The ECI published the draft proposals of the parliamentary and Assembly constituencies of Assam on June 20, 2023, keeping the numbers of the constituencies, both HPCs (House of People Constituencies) and LACs (Legislative Assembly Constituencies), the same. The existing number of HPCs in the state is 14, and that of LACs is 126. In the draft proposals, the ECI changed the boundaries of the existing constituencies, besides changing the names of a few constituencies and the number of reserved seats.

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