Ukraine's Central Election Commission (CEC) has scheduled first local election to 143 merged territorial communities for December 18.

The press service of CEC said last week that the commission announced that the election process of the first election of lawmakers or rural, settlement, town councils of these merged territorial communities and relevant rural, settlement and town council heads would on October 29, 2016.

CEC said that all UAH 30 million provided to the commission under a government resolution dated October 3 and it is enough to hold the election only in these 143 communities (76 rural, 46 settlement and 21 town communities).

As of October 7, 2016, CEC received 171 applications from regional administrations to schedule first local election in merged communities (90 rural, 54 settlement and 27 town communities).

CEC said that the first election cannot be scheduled in 25 merged communities (11 rural, eight settlement and six town communities), as they are part of the adjacent administrative and territorial units, and the commission decided that there are no grounds to hold election in them.

First local election cannot be held in three more rural communities as the Verkhovna Rada scheduled extraordinary election of rural council heads in the communities that merged with territorial communities of Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne and Cherkasy regions for December 4, 2016.