Kerala local body elections 2025 to be held in two phases on December 9 and 11; counting on December 13

The 2025 local body elections in Kerala will be held in two phases on December 9 and December 11, State Election Commissioner A. Shajahan said in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday (November 10, 2025), announcing the schedule of the elections.

Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Idukki, Alappuzha and Ernakulam will go to polls on December 9. Thrissur, Malappuram, Wayanad, Palakkad, Kannur, Kasaragod, Kannur and Kozhikode on December 11.

The votes will be counted on December 13 from 8 a.m. at multiple counting centres across the State.

Nominations can be filed up to November 21. The scrutiny of the nomination papers will be held on November 22. The last date for withdrawal of nominations is November 24.

Model code of conduct in force

With the announcement of the schedule, the model code of conduct has come into force across the State. The code will be strictly enforced, Mr. Shajahan said.

Polling will be held from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. mock poll will be held one hour before the actual polling begins.

Elections are to be held to 1,199 of the 1,200 local bodies in Kerala. Following the delimitation exercise in Kerala, the number of wards in the 1,200 local bodies had risen to 23,612. The 2025 elections are being held to 23,576 wards, excluding the 36 wards of the Mattannur municipality in Kannur where elections are due only in September 2027, Mr. Shajahan said.

Elections will be held to 17,337 wards in the grama panchayats, 2,267 wards in the block panchayats, 346 district panchayat wards, 3,205 municipality wards and 421 Corporation wards, he said.

In all, there are 33,746 polling stations for the 2025 elections. Of these, 28,127 are in the panchayats, 2015 in the corporations and 3,604 in the municipalities. Voter numbers per station has been fixed at 1,200 in the panchayats and 1,500 in the municipalities and Corporations.

First-level checks have been completed on 1,37,922 ballot units and 50,693 control units, Mr. Shajahan said.

In 2020, the local body polls in Kerala were held under strict supervision in three phases in December amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the 2020 elections, the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) had gained the upper hand over the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).

Kerala has a little over 2.84 crore voters. The commission had also given another two-day opportunity on November 4 and 5 for enrolment of names in the list. The supplementary list will be published on November 14, the Commissioner said.

The 2025 local body elections have coincided with the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters roll of the Election Commission of India (ECI) ahead of the 2026 State Assembly elections in Kerala. The Kerala government and major political parties including the CPI(M) and the Congress had objected to the ECI decision to go ahead with the SIR citing the confusion and inconvenience with respect to the local body poll arrangements.