Bye-Election Schedule: Five Assembly Seats, Nagaon Poll on 6 October

The correct answer is 6 October 2026, the date of poll in the schedule annexed to the Commission's announcement. The other three options are all real dates from the same schedule, which is exactly why this question separates the candidate who read the calendar from the one who only glanced at it. Option A is the last date for making nominations. Option B is the last date for the withdrawal of candidatures, which falls two days after the scrutiny of nominations. Option D is the date of counting of votes, which comes three days after the poll. One more date completes the sequence: the gazette notification is issued on 9 September 2026 and the whole election has to be completed before 11 October 2026. Learn the chain in order, notification, nomination, scrutiny, withdrawal, poll, counting, because examiners like to ask for one link out of it.

The correct answer is West Bengal. The Commission's list places Nandigram along with Rejinagar in West Bengal, both vacant because the sitting members resigned. Option A names Assam, which appears on the list but with a parliamentary constituency, Nagaon, not an Assembly seat. Option B names Tamil Nadu, which contributes two reserved Assembly seats to this round, Madurantakam and Dharapuram, both Scheduled Caste constituencies. Option C names Puducherry, a Union Territory with a legislature, which contributes the single seat of Thattanchavady. Map the six seats to their four units of the Union while revising, because a question may equally ask how many States and Union Territories are involved. The answer to that would be three States, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Assam, and one Union Territory, Puducherry.

The correct answer is four. The Commission's note recalls that Section 14 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 was amended by the Election Laws (Amendment) Act of 2021, and that the amendment provides four qualifying dates in a year on which a citizen may be enrolled as a voter. Before this change a single qualifying date governed enrolment, which is what option A describes and which is now out of date. Options B and D give numbers the law does not use. The practical effect is that a young citizen who turns eighteen need not wait a full year for the roll to open. The Commission also notes that the rolls keep getting updated until the last date of filing nominations, for applications received up to ten days before that date, so the roll is not frozen the moment the election is announced.