The schedule for the Lok Sabha polls has been announced by the Election Commission on Wednesday. The schedule was announced at a press conference by Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath along with Election Commissioners H.S. Brahma and S.N.A. Zaidi. The general elections 2014 will be held in nine phases, starting from April 7 to May 12. The counting will be on May 16

With the announcement of poll dates, the Model Code of Conduct for governments and political parties have come into force with immediate effect. The government will not be able to take or announce any major decisions which will be considered as sops to woo voters. This brings an end to all hopes of benefit to the government employees. Earlier there were lot of expectations from the central government employees that government will roll out sops. There were talks of DA merger, interim relief and hiking of retirement age to 62. Even various union leaders had expressed views that some of these may be implemented.  All these hopes have died down. The employees especialy at lower levels reeling under the impact of rise in prices of essential commodities had considered these demands as genuine and expected the government to do something. The only thing that the government did was announcement of the seventh pay commission. However the implementation of the report is not expected before 2016. The government did make an announcement of 10% DA hike. However this is only a procedure that will be automatically done once in 6 months and is based on inflation data.

Meanwhile the confederation have issued a circular expressing the dissatisfaction over the Cabinet approval of the Finance Ministry’s proposal on terms of reference of the 7th CPC.  Demonstrations are planned on March 7th across the country and indefinite strike after elections. ( Read 7th CPC ToR : Confederation demonstration on March 7th and indefinite strike after elections)