Guwahati: The Assam cabinet announced on Thursday that the state’s three-tier panchayat elections will be held in November.

The announcement was made two days after the day of the Lok Sabha election results.

With an eye on the rural polls, the cabinet has also decided to implement beneficiary schemes announced in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.

The ruling BJP-AGP-UPPL alliance won 11 of the 14 seats, while the Congress bagged the remaining three.

The decisions were announced by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday after a cabinet meeting was held in Guwahati.

Before the panchayat polls, there will be delimitation of the panchayats, anchalik parishads and zilla parishads so that these administrative units do not fall in separate Assembly constituencies.

The delimitation exercise will be completed by August and the voters list for the polls will be declared by September, Sarma said.

The redrawing of the panchayat boundaries has been necessitated to remove inconveniences caused by the delimitation of the Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies in 2023.

The state election commission conducts the rural body polls.

The last panchayat polls were held in 2018 when the ruling BJP had won 42 per cent (11,325 posts) and the Congress 34 per cent (8,970 posts) of the total 26,784 posts. The BJP’s ally AGP which had contested separately had won 1,963 posts.

However, the Congress is likely to put up a fight going by its showing in the parliamentary polls where its vote share has seen a steep rise and is marginally better than the BJP.

Beneficiary schemes

Sarma further said the government will see how to extend its flagship Orunodoi scheme where a woman gets ₹1,250 monthly. There are over 27 lakh beneficiaries under the scheme.

The government is also trying to implement the Assam Mukhyamantri Nijut Moina Scheme by September to empower the female students who have passed Class X and XII exams.

Each beneficiary student will receive ₹12,500 (Class XII pass) and ₹10,000 (Class X pass), respectively.

The extension of Orunodoi and Nijut Moina schemes were pre-poll promises, Sarma said.

The BJP-led government is also trying to implement the self-employment scheme of ₹2,00,000 to eligible youths by September.

In the first phase, the government will award ₹1,00,000 of the total scheme amount to 30,000 shortlisted beneficiaries during a function to be held in Guwahati by September.

The government, as promised, has decided to waive micro-finance loans by ₹50,000 up from ₹25,000 by August.