Heavy polling in Haryana’s Ellenabad bypoll

ELLENABAD - A heavy voter turnout was reported in the by-election to Haryana’s Ellenabad assembly seat with over 85 percent of voters having cast their ballot and many more still queued up Wednesday evening.

Haryana’s chief electoral officer Sumita Misra told IANS that nearly 85 percent voting was reported till 4 p.m. She said no violence was reported in the constituency.

“The final count will come later as even at 5 p.m. many voters were waiting to cast their votes,” she said.

The seat had witnessed 86 percent voting, the highest in the state, in the Oct 13 assembly poll.

Voting for the by-election to this seat had begun on a slow note Wednesday as thick fog enveloped most of the constituency.

The main contest is between the opposition Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidate Abhey Singh Chautala and Congress candidate Bharat Singh Beniwal.

Of the total 15 candidates in the fray, 11 were independents.

Abhey is the younger son of INLD president and former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, making the bypoll significant in state politics.

The INLD president, who had won this seat by 16,400 votes in the Oct 13 assembly election last year, had vacated it in November as he had been elected from another assembly seat, Uchana Kalan.

Officials said 144,181 voters, including 77,340 men and 66,841 women, were eligible to cast their votes in the 142 polling stations set up in the constituency.

All the booths were declared “hyper-sensitive” by the election commission.

Other major parties like the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had not fielded candidates for this by-election, in view of the direct contest between the Congress and the INLD.

At least 27 companies of Haryana police and central forces, out of which 10 companies were of paramilitary forces and five companies of India Reserve Battalion (IRB), were deputed to maintain law and order.