KOLKATA: The Election Commission will decide on the dates for the Assembly polls in West Bengal, Union Finance Minister and West Bengal Pradesh Congress chief Pranab Mukherjee said here on Saturday.

Talking to journalists after addressing a meeting organised by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, he said the Congress had no comments to make now and it was for the Election Commission to decide whether the dates need to be advanced. “It is a Constitutional issue,” he said.

West Bengal is scheduled to hold its Assembly elections in mid-2011 and the Trinamool Congress has been demanding advancement of dates to around October-November 2010. Ashok Ghosh, senior leader of the Forward Bloc, a major partner of the Left Front coalition in West Bengal, also went on record to say that the Election Commission could advance dates by six months if the Centre made such a recommendation.

Earlier, addressing an ICSI symposium on ‘Compliance, Governance & Financial Markets', Mr. Mukherjee said the government has received the report on financial sector reforms and the next generation reforms are on the anvil.