Even as the State Election Commission (SEC) has not announced a date for municipal elections in Ludhiana, Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday said the polls are likely to be held before February 24. He was replying to a question on the proposed cabinet expansion and said it would happen after the election process is over.
Though an official spokesperson clarified that Amarinder was only talking of tentative dates, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) took a dig at the Congress government. SAD spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema said, “The announcement of Ludhiana MC poll schedule by the CM himself indicates that the state government has taken total control of the State Election Commission. Soon, the government will also send the readymade result to the SEC for notification.
Earlier, local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu had said that elections for Ludhiana civic body were likely to be held before February 20. “We are targeting the first week of February, but the State Election Commission will take the final call,” Sidhu had told mediapersons on February 4.
The State Election Commission has, meanwhile, not made any formal announcement about the date of election even though it has been almost a month since the corporations in three cities of Patiala, Amritsar and Jalandhar were elected.
