Today in Politics: While PM Modi begins south India tour, the million-dollar question – when will EC announce LS poll dates?

Two new Election Commissioners chosen, the report on “One Nation, One Election” released, and data on the Electoral Bonds Scheme made public. After an eventful Thursday, the attention now shifts to when the Election Commission (EC) will announce the election schedule and the start of the all-important stage for political parties.

On Friday, the Prime Minister is expected to begin a tour of South India, one of the regions where the party still has the scope to expand. He is expected to address several rallies in various states in the region till at least March 19.

Modi will be in the town of Pathanamthitta in south Kerala at 10.30 am on Friday to address a poll event and, as per a PTI report, the NDA’s Lok Sabha candidates V Muraleedharan (Attingal), Anil Antony (Pathanamthitta), Sobha Surendran (Alappuzha), and Baiju Kalasala (Mavelikkara) will be present at the event apart from Padmaja Venugopal, who recently joined the BJP after quitting the Congress. According to some reports, the PM could also visit Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.

He is also expected to address a rally in the Kolar Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka and hold a roadshow from Mirjaguda to Malkajgiri near Hyderabad in the evening, PTI reported. In subsequent days, more events and rallies of the PM are scheduled in all five southern states, including in places such as Nagarkurnol, Shivamogga, Bidar, and Salem.

In context: As Liz Mathew wrote in her Road to 2024 column last month, “In fact, the BJP government has a specific figure that it hopes to surpass: the 49.10% votes the Congress got when it won 414 seats in the post-Indira Gandhi assassination election of 1984 (which remains the largest number of seats won by a party in the Lok Sabha). In other words, to