Chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami walks in for the news conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Oct. 14: The Election Commission today released Assembly poll schedules for five states between November 14 and December 4, but skipped any announcement on Jammu and Kashmir.

Sources said there still was time for the poll panel to announce an election in the Himalayan state if it wished.

The elections, billed as a “mini” general election, will be single-day affairs in Madhya Pradesh (November 25), Delhi (November 29), Mizoram (November 29) and Rajasthan (December 4). Naxalite-hit Chhattisgarh will see two-phase polls (November 14 and 20). The results for all five states will be declared on December 8.

Sources said the three-member commission was split over the timing of the Jammu and Kashmir polls, with chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami favouring a delayed vote with the Lok Sabha elections or later.

The other members, S.Y. Quraishi and Naveen Chawla, wanted the Jammu and Kashmir polls in November, in keeping with the government’s suggestion to the commission.

Jammu and Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra has been arguing that the current unrest in the state can be better handled by elected representatives than the Centre.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chief Sonia Gandhi too believed that a deferred election would give an impression that the Centre was too afraid to hold polls in a “strife-torn” state. Such a perception, they thought, might strengthen the separatists’ position.

The BJP seized on the commission’s silence on Jammu and Kashmir. “India cannot afford to send out a signal that it is not in a position to hold elections in this sensitive state,” Arun Jaitley said.

The Congress played it safe. Prithviraj Chavan, general secretary in charge of Jammu and Kashmir, said: “The timing and appropriateness of the elections is the EC’s call. We are fully prepared for them.”

With at best six months left for the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and the BJP are viewing these Assembly elections as a “referendum” on their governments.

The BJP is projecting them as a “verdict” on the UPA while the Congress sees them as a vote for or against the state governments. Four of the five states are ruled by non-Congress parties: Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh by the BJP and Mizoram by the Mizo National Front. Delhi alone has a Congress government.

Congress sources acknowledged that the verdicts would, up to a point, reflect the popular mood on the Centre’s “showpieces” such as the nuclear deal, the rural job scheme and the Rural Health Care Mission.

They, however, added that the nuclear deal might not be “showcased in a big way” in the states, and the polls could rather point to the impact of issues such as price rise and the economic slack.

“Past trends show that in a state election, the negative effect of such issues need not necessarily go against the Centre and, instead, may go against the incumbent state governments. So we may not get the rap,” a Congress source claimed.

In keeping with tradition, the Congress is unlikely to name its candidates for chief minister except in Delhi, where Sheila Dikshit will lead from the front. The BJP is flogging its favourite line: “Our leader versus a blank.”

The BJP believes that if the elections narrow down to a clash of personalities rather than issues, it will have the edge — especially in Rajasthan where, sources claim, Vasundhara Raje towers above all.