Moderate Polling in Maha, Haryana; Heavy in Arunachal Pradesh
Moderat voting was recorded in Maharashtra and Haryana while there was heavy polling in Arunachal Pradesh as people in the three states exercised their ballots to elect new Legislative Assemblies.
According to preliminary reports, Maharashtra recorded a voting of 50 per cent, Haryana of 55 per cent and Arunachal Pradesh of 70 per cent.
Except few of incidences of violence, the voting in the three states was peaceful by and large. In Haryana’s Kaithal district, a polling agent was killed in a clash between supporters of two candidates, and another in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, where a group of suspected Naxalites attacked a police patrol party and an election booth.
Maharashtra, which has a total electorate of 7.58 crore, has 3559 candidates, including 211 women, in the fray in the 288 constituencies. The Congress has put up 169 candidates, the Shiv Sena 160, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 119, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 281, the NCP 114, the Communist Party of India (CPI) 21, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) 19, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) 1. Independents and others add up to 2675 candidates.
In Maharashtra, the fight is mainly between the ruling Congress-NCP alliance and the Shiv Sena-BJP combine.
In Arunachal Pradesh, there are 151 candidates in the fray, fate of whom was to be decided by an electorate of 7.25 lakh voters.
Congress has put up candidates for all the other 57 seats. In the outgoing assembly, the Congress has 43 members, while 13 are independents and two each belong to the NCP and the Arunachal Congress. The BJP had nine members but all of them had walked across to the Congress last year, reducing its strength in the house to zero.
Interestingly, the NCP, which is an ally of the Congress in Maharashtra and at the Centre, has put up 36 candidates in Arunachal Pradesh. Another UPA ally, the Trinamool Congress, is contesting from 26 constituencies in the state.
There are 2061 polling stations in Arunachal Pradesh, 12,894 in Haryana and 82,028 in Maharashtra.
