Polling has begun in Punjab and Uttarakhand from 8 am with a tight security of around 70972 police force including 225 paramilitary forces have been deployed to have peaceful polling.
The main competition is between Chief Ministerial Parkash Singh Badal from Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance and Amarinder Singh of opposition Congress.
From Punjab, the highest numbers of candidates are in Jalalabad, Ludhiana-east and Patiala rural seats. Badal’s son Sukhbir Singh Badal who is currently the Deputy Chief Minister and President of the Akali Dal is also in the battle of election and contesting from Jalalabad. And Manpreet Singh Badal who is contesting on a People’s Party of Punjab ticket from Gidderbaha constituency after quitted the Akali Dal.
However around 1.76 crore voters will be polling for 1,078 candidates and voting start in 117 assembly seats in Punjab today and 70 Assembly constituencies in Uttarakhand with over 60 lakh voters expected to exercise in the single-phased elections that decide the fate of 788 candidates that elected assembly polls.
Polling has also started in Uttarakhand today morning from 7:30 am.
As per Uttarakhand Chief Electoral Officer Radha Raturi, 75 central paramilitary forces along with 10,000 home guards from Uttar Pradesh, 2000 home guards from Himachal Pradesh and 10,000 personnel from Uttarakhand force have been deployed for polling and also an Indian Airforce helicopter has been served at Sarsawa to rescue any threat of polling.
In Uttarakhand, main contestants are of the chief minister BC Khanduri from Kotdwar, former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank from Doiwala, Leader of Opposition Harak Singh Rawat from Rudraprayag and PCC chief Yashpal Arya from Baajpur seats, battle in the assembly election polls and have in a full force to beat each other.
9744 polling booths have been set up across the state and 1794 stations out of which have been declared as “sensitive” and 1252 as “hyper-sensitive”. And in Punjab – Patiala, Lambi, Bholath, Majithia and Jalalabad – have been declared “hyper-sensitive” and other 33 constituencies have been declared as “sensitive”.
Moreover today as polling day, all government, non-government offices, schools, colleges, industrial establishments and shops have been asked to close to remain left from the any effort of violence arisen by the outsiders.
