NEW DELHI: Assembly elections in the hilly State of Himachal Pradesh will be held on November 9 and the counting of votes will be held on December 18, the Election Commission announced on Thursday. 

Though the EC did not announce the dates of assembly polls for Gujarat, it said that polling there would be held before December 18. 

Announcing the schedule for Himachal Pradesh assembly polls, Chief Election Commissioner AK Jyoti said that a model code of conduct, a set of dos and don’ts for political parties for their election campaign, will come into effect from Thursday. 

For the 68 assembly constituencies in Himachal Pradesh, Electronic Voting Machines or EVMs with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system will be used in all polling stations. In the last assembly elections, the Congress had won 36 seats and the BJP 27 while independent candidates had bagged five seats.

Polling in Gujarat will be held before December 18, the day of counting of votes in Himachal Pradesh, so that the result of Himachal cannot affect the voting in Gujarat. The CEC said: “We will, in a few days, announce the dates for Gujarat election, but I can say for sure that voting in Gujarat will happen before December 18.”

Both the Congress and the BJP which has ruled Gujarat for the past one and a half decade have sounded poll bugle in the two poll-bound states.