Shillong, Oct 8: Elections to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) will be held after completion of delimitation exercise and electoral roll preparation, Deputy Chief Minister in-charge District Council Affairs Prestone Tynsong said on Thursday.
The minister justified the government decision to further extend the Council’s term by another six months, saying both the critical exercises are still under way.
“The GHADC term was extended only because of two issues,” he said.
The first, he said, is delimitation. “We set up the delimitation committee and now the delimitation is almost in the final stage,” Tynsong said.
He said the report will be placed before the Council House for passage before being sent to the Governor.
“Once the delimitation committee submits the report to the District Council, then the District Council has to bring it to the House and the House will pass this delimitation report and send it to the Governor for approval,” he said.
The second exercise is linked to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Stating that the final electoral roll after the SIR will be published on 26 October, he said, “This SIR will again be adopted by the GHADC for the electoral roll.”
He said Returning Officers in Garo Hills will then prepare a separate electoral roll for the Council polls.
Following the recent amendment making GHADC polls only a tribal affair, the voters will have be segregated in non-tribal and tribal categories before holding the Council elections, he said.
“These are the two processes which need to be done and once that is done, then the election will be fixed,” Tynsong added.
