Assam: Silchar Set for Civic Body Poll in September

A correspondent

Silchar: After a decade, Silchar is now going to its first civic body poll, this time for the newly upgraded Municipal Corporation. The State Election Commission had issued a notification for preparing the ward based electoral roll from May 19 to 26. Local Minister Kaushik Rai said that the Corporation election would be held in the first part of the coming September.

Term of the erstwhile Silchar Municipality Board expired on April 1, 2020. Since then the second largest city of the state did not have any civic body as the government had upgraded the municipality board as a corporation. But legal cases challenging the inclusion of certain parts of the suburbs continued to delay the election for the last five years. Finally a few months before the Assembly election, scheduled on the first quarter of the next year, the city is now gearing up for its first ever Corporation poll.

Gitartha Barua, secretary of the State Election Commission in a notification directed the concerned departments to initiate the process for the basic preliminary work for the Electoral Roll from May 19 and to complete it by May 26. The Draft Roll would be published on June 18 and the final voter list on July 8. A reliable source indicated that the notification for the election would be issued on June 10 and the election would be held on September 12.

Number of voters of the newly upgraded Silchar Municipality  Corporation with 42 wards, was almost 4.40 lakh.

The current political scenario in the entire Barak Valley indicated a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress as no third force could be seen. The urban Silchar had traditionally been a strong fort of the saffron party. The minority dominated suburbs used to play the decisive role. In the recently held Panchayat election, the sole Zilla Parishad seat with majority Muslim voters in the Silchar Assembly constituency, the Congress candidate defeated his ruling party competitor.

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