Adampur, Indri and Gohana set to go for by-polls tomorrow

Chandigarh, May 21 (UNI) All arrangements are in place for the byelections for three Haryana Assembly seats of Adampur, Indri and Gohana tomorrow.

The polling wouold begin through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in these seats at 0800 hrs tomorrow and finish at 1700 hrs to decide the fate of 77 candidates in all.

The counting would take place on May 25 and all results were expected to be declared by evening that day.

The by-polls were necessitated as the Congress legislators from these constituencies joining the newly-launched Haryana Janhit Congress and losing their assembly membership under the anti-defection law.

According to Chief Electoral Officer Sajjan Singh, all arrangements have been made and ample police force has been deployed to ensure smooth, fair and peaceful conduct of the polls.

The high-pitched campaign for the polls, in which prominent leaders toured the constituencies extensively had also passed off peacefully as it drew to a close last evening, he said.

Political stalwarts including Congress Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, HJC leaders Bhajan Lal and Kuldeep Bishnoi and INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala and his sons Ajay and Abhay Chautala along with hoard of local leaders of these parties, had wooed the electorate through rallies and meetings.

Adampur has emerged as the most important seat as former chief minister and now a HJC stalwart Bhajan Lal is pitted against former finance minister and INLD leader Sampat Singh, former deputy prime minister Devi Lal's son and Congress candidate Ranjit Singh and BharatiyaJanata Party's state unit's vice-president Swami Raghavanad.

In Adampur of the 130 polling centres, 43 have been declared hyper-sensitive while 35 were sensitive.

In Gohana, 144 polling booths have been set up of which 73 are hyper-sensitive and 15 were sensitive.

In Indri, of 147 polling booths 22 are very sensitive while 46 are sensitive.

In Adampur, the 1,37,480 strong electorate, 63,175 of them female voters, has a wide range of 41 candidates to choose from.

In Indri, HJC's Rakesh Kamboj, Congress candidate Bhimsen Mehta and INLD's Ashok Kashyap are locked in a triangular contest. In all 13 aspirants are wooing 1,39,468 voters here of whom 63,017 are women.

Gohana Assembly seat is also witnessing a triangular contest among HJC's Dharmpal Malik, Congress candidate Jagbir Singh Malik and INLD's K C Bangad.

Gohana has an electorate of 1,17,263 with 53,200 women voters.

There are 21 candidates in the fray here.

The government has declared a public holiday in these three constituencies tomorrwo.

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