Chandigarh: Amidst a straight contest between the state ruling BJP and the main Opposition Congress, the counting of votes for the 10 parliamentary seats and the bypoll for the Karnal assembly seat in Haryana began on Tuesday amid tight security arrangements.
The high-stake Lok Sabha elections months ahead of the Assembly polls were held on May 25, sealing the electoral fate of 223 candidates. A 64.80 per cent voter turnout was recorded in Haryana, with the Sirsa seat registering 69.77 per cent, the state’s highest.
The counting of votes began at 8 a.m. at 91 centres, Chief Electoral Officer Anurag Agarwal told IANS.
The heavyweights in the fray are two Union ministers, Rao Inderjit Singh and Krishan Pal Gurjar. The BJP has renominated both OBC MPs from Gurugram and Faridabad, respectively.
Deepender Hooda and former Union Minister Kumari Selja — both from the Congress; and two-time chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP are among the key contestants.
Three-time MP Hooda is on the ballot in the family Jat-dominated bastion Rohtak, while four-time MP Selja is trying her luck in Sirsa (reserved) — the seat she represented twice in the Lok Sabha — and Khattar, an RSS man with a clean image, is ensuring win in his maiden Lok Sabha battle in Karnal.
BJP’s Naveen Jindal, 54, is the youngest son of the richest woman in India, Savitri Jindal. Switched from the Congress to the BJP in March, he’s in the fray from Kurukshetra, the seat he represented between 2004 and 2014.
Jindal took on AAP candidate and former Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Gupta. The AAP is contesting the Lok Sabha elections in Haryana in an alliance with Congress and has been given Kurukshetra.
Besides the Lok Sabha polls, there was a bypoll for the Karnal assembly seat, the seat vacated by Khattar, where Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, the outgoing MP in the Lok Sabha from Kurukshetra, is among the nine candidates in the fray. Saini had replaced Khattar as the chief minister in March.
Ground reports indicated a neck-and-neck contest between the BJP and the Congress.
–IANS