New Delhi, 15 March

The Election Commission will announce the schedule for the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday. In a post on X, the poll panel said a press conference to announce the schedule for Lok Sabha elections and some state assemblies will be held at 3pm on Saturday.

The term of the present Lok Sabha ends on 16 June and a new House has to be constituted before that. The term of the assemblies in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha is coming to an end on various dates in June.

Last time the Lok Sabha polls were announced on 10 March and held in seven phases beginning 11 April. Votes were counted on 23 May. In 2014 also, the EC had sent invites for its poll schedule press conference a day in advance. The invite was sent in the evening for the presser to be held early next day.

Nearly 97 crore people are eligible to cast vote in the upcoming polls at over 12 lakh polling stations. In the last parliamentary polls, the BJP had won 303 seats while the Congress got 52 seats. It could not muster enough numbers to claim the position of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The 2024 parliamentary polls are being seen as a do or die battle for the Opposition INDIA bloc.

According to a News 18 opinion poll, the BJP-led NDA is headed for a "historic mandate" in the upcoming pols. The opinion poll claimed that the NDA is set to win 411 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha with the BJP alone clinching a record 350 seats.

According to an opinion poll survey by ABP-CVoter, the INDIA bloc is likely to get only six seats in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.