New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday dissolved the Delhi state legislative assembly, paving the way for fresh polls to break the year-long deadlock.

Mukherjee accepted on Tuesday recommendation of the Union Cabinet which had ratified Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung’s recommendation to dissolve the Delhi assembly after all major parties expressed their inability to form the new government.

The autonomous Election Commission later withdrew notification to hold by-elections for three constituencies which had fallen vacant after election of three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmakers to parliament.

Sources in the poll panel said that fresh polls could be held towards end of January or early February. Election Commission is required to hold fresh polls within six months of the dissolution of an assembly.

“We don’t want to wait for so long despite the constitutional provisions. We are going to be preoccupied with state polls in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand till December-end and would rather hold fresh polls after the revised voters’ list is published in the beginning of January,” a senior Election Commission official said.

The decision to hold fresh polls was taken by Lt Gov Jung on Monday after all three major parties, namely BJP, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress party officially informed him that they were in favour of fresh polls.

Jung had started the process of trying to install an elected government in Delhi after getting nod from President Mukherjee to invite the single largest party, which happens to be the BJP, to form the new government. He met leaders of the three parties on Monday and recommended dissolution of the assembly the same evening.

Delhi has been under President’s rule since February after the minority AAP government led by Arvind Kejriwal resigned on February 14 this year after being in power for 49 days. Delhi had elected a hung assembly in December last year and Kejriwal formed the government with outside support of the Congress party.

While fresh polls may still be some time away, political activities have started in the right earnest in all three camps with both BJP and AAP claiming they would get majority on their own in the 70-member assembly.

The Congress party, which was reduced to just eight lawmakers after running the provincial Delhi government for 15 years, is however making no such claims and just intends to improve upon its performance.

The Congress party, however, started its poll preparations on a controversial note. Party vice president Rahul Gandhi held a meeting of senior Delhi Congress leaders on Wednesday morning and announced inclusion of both Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar in the party’s panel for Delhi elections. Both Tytler and Kumar are accused of inciting anti-Sikh riots that followed assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

Realising that the party cannot afford to annoy the Sikh voters, Rahul Gandhi’s office came up with a clarification later in the day saying the two leaders would just campaign for Congress party’s candidates which it said was a democratic right of any citizen.

The star campaigner, however, will be thrice Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit who is now living a semi-retired life after quitting as Kerala governor. Dikshit has already said that she would not contest the upcoming assembly polls.

The Congress party, in its bid to increase its tally, is contemplating asking various former federal ministers and ex-Members of Parliament belonging to Delhi to contest the assembly polls.