Elections to the 46-member Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in the four Bodoland Territorial Area Districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri will be held from 8am till 4pm on April 4.

Repoll, if any, will be held on April 6 and final counting will begin from 8am on April 8, the Assam State Election Commission announced on Wednesday in a notification signed by commissioner Alok Kumar.

The last date for filing nomination is March 18 while scrutiny of nominations will take place on March 19. The last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 21 and the final list of candidates will be published the same day.

“The nomination papers will be received on all working days from 11am till 3pm, including second Saturday. However, no nomination paper shall be received by the returning officer on a public holiday under the NI Act, 1881,” the notification stated.

The BTC has 46 members, of whom 40 are elected and six are nominated from non-represented communities.

Kumar said in Guwahati that there are 3,077 polling stations for the election, among which 521 have been tagged as “very sensitive” and over 1,000 as “sensitive”. He said 15,000 staff members will be deployed in the booths.

Kumar said, “We have directed all the deputy commissioners and superintendents to seize all arms in BTAD.”

Commission sources said the Union home ministry was directly monitoring the BTC polls for its peaceful completion.

“If there is any untoward incident, the message will not be good for the central government as it claimed permanent peace will come to the Bodo belt after the new tripartite peace accord was signed in January. They are trying to run the election smoothly,” a source said.

The election will be held against the backdrop of the signing of the third Bodo peace accord with several former NDFB leaders contesting the polls.

Additional reporting by Rokibuz Zaman in Guwahati