Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh will be held on October 13 and 7, respectively, the election commission said on Tuesday.

By-elections to four Lok Sabha and 41 assembly seats in 14 states will be held on October 13, it said.

Announcing the schedule in New Delhi, Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishna Murthy said the commission had taken adequate steps to ensure free and fair polls, which will be held entirely through electronic voting machines.

"The model code of conduct comes into immediate effect" with the announcement of the schedule, the CEC said.

The notification for Maharashtra and Arunachal will be issued on September 15 and 13, respectively and the last date for filing nominations will be September 22 and 20.

Scrutiny of nominations in Maharashtra will take place on September 23. In Arunachal it will be on September 21.

The last date for withdrawal of names in Maharashtra is September 25 and September 23 in Arunachal.

Re-poll, if any, would be held in Maharashtra on October 15 and Arunachal on October 9.

Counting will be held in Maharashtra on October 16 and in the north-eastern state on October 10.

The schedule for the by-polls is same as that for Maharashtra.

The term of the Maharashtra assembly was to expire on October 20, and that of Arunchal on October 12, where the assembly was dissolved on July 6.

By-polls will be held for the four Lok Sabha seats of Mainpuri, Akbarpur (Uttar Pradesh), Madhepura (Bihar) and Bidar (Karnataka).

While the Mainpuri seat was vacated by UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akbarpur seat fell vacant following Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati's election to the Rajya Sabha.

Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, who chose to retain the Chapra seat, vacated Madhepura.

The by-election in Bidar was necessitated due to the death of Ramchandra Veerappa.

The 41 assembly seats where by-polls will be held are: 12 in UP, four each in Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, three each in Nagaland, Punjab and West Bengal, two each in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, and one each in Assam, Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Manipur.