Assembly polls: Kerala shifts to election mode with April 9 set as poll date

Kerala has shifted gears to full election mode with the Election Commission of India (EC) announcing April 9 as the date for the 2026 election to the State Legislative Assembly and the Model Code of Conduct coming into effect.

Political parties, in fact, have a tight campaign schedule with less than a month left for the election. The gazette notification will be issued on March 16. March 23 is the last date for filing nominations. The scrutiny of nomination papers will be held on March 24. March 26 is the deadline for withdrawing the nominations.

The polled votes will be counted on May 4.

2.7 crore voters

As per the latest data released by the EC, Kerala has 2.7 crore voters of whom 1,571 are centenarians. Of the total voters, 1.38 crore are women, 1.31 crore are men and 277 are transgender voters. There are approximately 2.04 lakh voters who are 85 plus, and 2.43 lakh who are voters in the Persons with Disabilities (PwD) category.

A little over 4.24 lakh are first-time electors in the 18-19 age bracket and 45 lakh electors in the 20-29 age bracket. Service electors number 54,110.

Kerala will have 30,471 polling stations for the 2026 Assembly elections. Of these, 6,130 are in the urban areas and 24,341 in the rural areas. To avoid crowding, the EC has limited the number of voters per booth to 1,200. The average number of electors per polling station in Kerala is 885, according to the EC.

Kerala had only 25,231 polling stations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Kerala will have 790 ‘model’ polling stations, 397 booths fully managed by women officers and 31 managed by officers in the PwD category. Webcasting will be arranged in all polling stations.

Of the 140 Assembly constituencies in the State, 14 are reserved for the Scheduled Caste communities and two, for Scheduled Tribes.