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India to hold four state elections next month

NEW DELHI: India's election commission announced on Saturday that assembly elections are to be held in four states next month.

"Elections in four states would be held in three phases: on February 12, 17 and 22," Chief Election Commissioner M.S. Gill told a news conference.

Polling in the crime-racked eastern state of Bihar will be spread over all the three days while people in Orissa, recently ravaged by a cyclone, will vote on February 17 and 22.

Elections in the remote northeastern state of Manipur will be held on February 12 and 22 and the northern state of Haryana, neighbouring the capital, will have polls on February 22.

The state assembly polls announced on Saturday are the first since federal elections that ended in October in which the 20-party coalition led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party won power for a new term.

"A total 651 assembly seats will go to polls in four states in three phases," Gill said, and added that the counting of votes will begin on February 25.

He said parliamentary elections to fill the seat vacated by Sonia Gandhi, president of the main opposition Congress party, in Bellary in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, and regional Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav in Kannauj in northern Uttar Pradesh, will also be held on February 17.-Reuters