The Congress has approached the Supreme Court against the Election Commission (EC) for the latter not announcing the dates for Assembly elections in Gujarat.

The Congress party in its petition to SC has complained that EC has announced the date of counting for Himachal Pradesh but it has not announced the poll dates for Gujarat. "Why notification of dates for Gujarat elections was not made by EC?" a senior Congress leader said.

The petition also demands that the time span of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) be exceeded from 8 seconds to 15 seconds.

AICC Legal Department head Vivek Tankha said, "We had given 14 points in petition which was filed in the Supreme Court. We had hoped that reply will come from EC. But it did not come."

"We will raise the Gujarat poll date issue inside the court also," he said.

The matter is likely to be heard in the apex court today. Meanwhile, the Congress has released the list of 40 star campaigners for the November 9 Assembly elections.

The list includes the names of party president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda among others.

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