Counting in Ellenabad by-poll Saturday
By IANSFriday, January 22, 2010
ELLENABAD - The district administration has made all arrangements for smooth counting of votes in the Ellenabad bye-election to the Haryana state assembly Saturday, officials said Friday.
The counting would begin at Panchayat Bhawan in Sirsa at 8 a.m.
“More than 160 officials have been deputed for counting of votes. Paramilitary force personnel will be deployed in and around the counting centre and due to security reasons, traffic passing in front of counting venue will be diverted,” district electoral officer A. Sriniwas said
Nearly 89 percent voters turned up to cast their votes in the Ellenabad be-polls Wednesday, where the main contest was between Congress’ Bharat Singh Beniwal and the opposition Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidate Abhey Singh Chautala - the younger son of INLD president and former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala.
The INLD president, who won this seat by 16,400 votes in the Oct 13 assembly election last year, vacated it in November, retaining Uchana Kalan - the other assembly constituency he was elected from.
Other major parties like the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had not fielded candidates for this bye-election and of the total 15 candidates in the fray, 11 were Independents.
