Punjab Assembly Election 2022: ECI schedules it for February 20

The Election Commission of India has decided that the assembly elections in Punjab will be held on February 20 instead of the earlier date which was February 14.

The ECI has announced its decision after all political parties in Punjab made a request to postpone the date due to the birth anniversary of Guru Ravidas Jayanti. The ECI considered their request and announced a new date.

All the political parties of the state including Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had demanded the elections be deferred for at least six days.

Channi had cited the reason, ie, the birth anniversary of Guru Ravidas Jayanti which is on February 16. In a letter to the Election Commission of India, he had written that a lot of people of Punjab will travel to Banaras from February 10 to February 16 to participate in his birth anniversary. Hence, they will not be able to exercise their rights to vote in the forthcoming election.

"In such a situation, many people from this community would not be able to cast their votes for the state assembly, which is otherwise their constitutional right. They have requested that the voting date may be extended in such a way that they are able to visit Banaras from February 10 to February 16 as also participate in the assembly elections," Channi had written in a letter to ECI.

Punjab Aam Aadmi Party head Bhagwant Mann had also made a similar suggestion through a tweet. Even Punjab BJP General Secretary Subhash Sharma had said that Punjab has a substantial population of followers of Guru Ravidas ji, including the Scheduled Castes (SC) community which is about 32 per cent of the population of Punjab.

“On this pious occasion, millions of devotees would visit Banaras in Uttar Pradesh to celebrate the gurparb,” Sharma had written.