When will elections to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly be held if the H D Kumaraswamy government, reduced to minority status on Sunday, demits office and the House is dissolved?

The Election Commission of India is understood to be of the opinion that polls to the Karnataka Assembly, if required, can be held at the earliest only by February 2008. EC sources told Deccan Herald here on Sunday that while revision of electoral rolls in Karnataka has been completed, the EC would require 2-3 months to put everything else in place for holding the elections.

Therefore, scheduling the Karnataka elections along with the Gujarat Assembly polls which is most likely to be held in December 2007 is almost ruled out, they added. 

The revision of electoral rolls has been finished in the entire State except that of the Bangalore Urban district which also would be completed during this month. The next due date for the revision of rolls is January 1, 2008 but if the EC is called upon to hold elections in Karnataka, then this would be ignored.

Besides the electoral rolls, the EC will take several other issues into consideration before getting poll-ready. They include wide consultations with the State machinery including senior officials and police, political parties etc, arranging personnel for election work and satisfying themselves on all aspects that polling can go on smoothly.
In the 2004 elections, the total number of electors in Karnataka stood at 3,85,86,754.

As per the data available till 2006, the number of voters in the revised list stood at 4,16,46,836. This included 2.12 crore male and 2.04 crore female voters.