The Election Commission is expected to soon announce the Assembly poll schedule in the coming few days.

The commission, on Friday, deliberated with the Chief Secretaries of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh on the issue of assembling 4,000-5,000 Urdu-speaking government employees for poll duty.

According to the sources, the states agreed to help out the EC and have asked for time until Friday to revert with a detailed account of the staff they can allocate for poll duties in the Valley.

The main motive of EC behind this meeting was to put together a contingency plan in case J&K government staff is not available for poll duty due to some unexpected reasons.

After getting a positive response from the states, a senior EC official said that “polls in J&K are well within the possible range.”

The centre has already specified that it will deploy adequate security forces and since the poll schedule could not be extended beyond the second week of December, it has announced that it will declare the schedule very soon.