Polling officials check EVMs and other election related material before leaving for their respective polling booths on the eve of Haryana Assembly elections, at Bits College (Mohana) in Sonipat, Oct. 4, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Over two crore people will be eligible to vote in the Haryana Assembly elections on Saturday which will decide whether the BJP will hold on to power for the third time or the Congress will returns to power after a ten year gap.
The polling will be held between 7 am and 6 pm while the counting of votes will be on October 8. There are 1,031 candidates in the fray. Among them, 930 are men and 101 are women. According to officials, 20,629 polling booths have been established in the state for the elections.
The campaign for the fiercely contested elections ended on Thursday with both sides exuding confidence that they would outsmart the opponent in the number game in the Assembly, which has a strength of 90 MLAs.
Though the main contest is between the BJP and the Congress, parties like AAP and alliances like INLD-BSP and JJP-ASP(Kanshi Ram) can impact results in around 20 seats. This could make the polls interesting as they could be in a position to decide on which way the power pendulum swings.
In the 2019 elections, BJP with 40 seats, six less than the majority mark, managed to form the government for the second time after gaining the support of ten member JJP and others. However, BJP and JJP parted ways before Lok Sabha elections.
On Friday, several candidates were busy trying the loose ends at the last minute and met party and booth workers. Former chief minister and Leader of Opposition in Haryana assembly Bhupinder Singh Hooda met party workers in Rohtak while BJP's former Home minister Anil Vij was in the party office in Ambala where he met party functionaries.
Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini along with his wife visited the Mansa Devi Temple in Panchkula and performed 'havan yagya'.
Top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP of failing the economy in Haryana and said the people of the state will soon strike the next blow to break the 'chakravyuh' of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "crony capitalist policies".
Ashok Tanwar, a Dalit leader who returned to the Congress, urged all sections, including Dalits and backward classes, in Haryana to ensure a "big mandate" for the Congress in the election.
Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said he was confident that the BJP will form a government in Haryana. "I have been to Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana amid the assembly polls. I am totally confident that the BJP is going to form governments there. The atmosphere in Haryana is very good and we are going to form a government there as well," Chouhan told reporters in Bhopal.
Assembly Elections 2024 | In the first assembly polls since the Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi and the BJP face a rejuvenated and vindicated Opposition in the Haryana assembly polls. Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir is voting after almost a decade and it remains to be seen how the abrogation of Article 370 has impacted the political landscape of the Valley. Track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.