Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Tuesday afternoon announced it has set the date for presidential elections for next year.

The IEC said these elections will be held on April 20, six months after the October parliamentary and district council elections.

No further details were immediately available.

This comes after National Unity Government (NUG) leaders called on the IEC a week ago to announce the date for the 2019 presidential election as “soon as possible”.

According to a statement issued by the President’s Office at the time, President Ashraf Ghani met with IEC members, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Tadamichi Yamamoto, and various ambassadors of countries supporting the election process.

In this episode host Masoud Malik discusses the topic with the Abdullah Ahmadzai, the Asia Foundation's Country Representative in Afghanistan.

In the second part of the program Malik discusses watchdogs demands for the IECC to disqualify candidates with links to armed groups.

The Independent Electoral Complaints Commission’s  committee tasked to investigate reports of links between some candidates and illegal armed groups on Tuesday said it has changed its mechanism of identifying candidates with links to illegal armed groups. 

IECC spokesman Ali Reza Rouhani said that based on the new mechanism, after this, the IECC will act against those candidates who have complaints lodged against them and that the final decision will be taken in line with a consensus among IECC members. 

But rights groups have said candidates who have links with illegal armed groups and are accused of rights violations must be dropped from the list of the candidates.

In this episode host Masoud Malik discusses the topic with Ali Reza Rouhani spokesman for the IECC.