Burning day fires up Haryana voters

Chandigarh: Haryana witnessed around 65% (provisional data) turnout on Saturday for 10 seats of the 18th Lok Sabha. The voting on Saturday sealed the fate of 223 candidates, including 16 women.

Karnal assembly bypoll, in which chief minister Nayab Singh Saini was a contestant, registered a 57.8% (provisional) voter turnout.

Barring a few minor scuffles and insignificant incidents where Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) reported technical snag at some places, polling in the state largely remained peaceful. The officials of the Election Commission of India (ECI) confirmed that the data is yet to be finalised and the polling percentage may witness some increase. The counting and result would be announced on June 4.

Of around two crore voters, around 65% exercised their franchise at around 20,000 polling stations in 10 parliamentary constituencies spread over 22 districts of Haryana. The 2019 Lok Sabha polls in which BJP won all the 10 seats had witnessed a record electorate turnout of 74.3 %.

Prominent among those whose electoral fate would be decided when the results would be out on June 4, are two Union ministers, including Rao Inderjit Singh from Gurgaon and Krishan Pal Gurjar from Faridabad, former CM Manohar Lal Khattar from Karnal, former Union minister and Congress general secretary Kumari Selja from Sirsa (reserved).

Chandigarh: Haryana witnessed around 65% (provisional data) turnout on Saturday for 10 seats of the 18th Lok Sabha. The voting on Saturday sealed the fate of 223 candidates, including 16 women.

Karnal assembly bypoll, in which chief minister Nayab Singh Saini was a contestant, registered a 57.8% (provisional) voter turnout.

Barring a few minor scuffles and insignificant incidents where Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) reported technical snag at some places, polling in the state largely remained peaceful. The officials of the Election Commission of India (ECI) confirmed that the data is yet to be finalised and the polling percentage may witness some increase. The counting and result would be announced on June 4.

Of around two crore voters, around 65% exercised their franchise at around 20,000 polling stations in 10 parliamentary constituencies spread over 22 districts of Haryana. The 2019 Lok Sabha polls in which BJP won all the 10 seats had witnessed a record electorate turnout of 74.3 %.

Prominent among those whose electoral fate would be decided when the results would be out on June 4, are two Union ministers, including Rao Inderjit Singh from Gurgaon and Krishan Pal Gurjar from Faridabad, former CM Manohar Lal Khattar from Karnal, former Union minister and Congress general secretary Kumari Selja from Sirsa (reserved).

Burning day fires up Haryana voters
Chandigarh: Haryana on Saturday turned out in a 46-degree-Celsius heat to elect its 10 MPs and though the polling percentage can go up from the final reported 64.10, it is still expected to remain below last time's 74.3, when 1.26 crore people had voted.

The fate of 223 candidates is now sealed in the electronic voting machines (EVMs). The last-reported turnout in the simultaneous assembly byelection for Karnal was also a low 57.3%. Haryana's additional chief electoral officer, Hema Sharma, claimed that the day had passed without an untoward incident, with "a negligible count of EVM-related complaints".

The heavyweights in the day's electoral contest included industrialist Navin Jindal, Indian National Lok Dal's Abhay Chautala, Aam Aadmi Party's Susil Gupta from Kurukshetra, former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, incumbent CM Nayab Singh Saini, Haryana Youth Congress president Divyanshu Budhiraja from Karnal, Deepender Hooda and Arvind Sharma from Rohtak, Selja and Ashok Tanwar from Sirsa, three Chautalas (Ranjit, Naina, and Sunaina) from Hisar, Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh and Raj Babbar from Gurugram, Union minister Krishan Pal Gujjar and Mahender Partap from Faridabad, and Rao Dan Singh and Dharambir Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.

A handful of altercations were reported from Mullana and Yamunanangar, while a trans-Yamuna village of Yamunanagar boycotted the elections. Police and paramilitary forces from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh supported local security, while the forecast of severe heat wave had prompted the administration to keep enough health kits at the polling stations. The first voters started arriving at 7am when the heat was still 33°C. The heaviest turnouts were in Kurukshetra and Mahendragarh-Bhiwani seats, and the heaviest of that was in the hottest hours of 11am to 2pm.

The Election Commission of India's dashboard displayed how the voting went from 21.7% at 11am to 40.07% by 2 pm, when temperature soared from 34°C to 46°C in Mahendragarh and 44°C in Kaithal. By the end of the day, the voting crowd had increased. By the filing of this report, the turnout compilation was pending at 2,000 booths, since the polling parties had not deposited the EVMs.

Former CMs Manohar Lal Khattar and Bhupinder Singh Hooda, besides former Union minister Selja, thanked the electorate after voting.