Haryana Polls: Five fresh nominations filed

Five candidates filed their nominations papers for the October 15 Haryana Assembly polls. Among them four were Independent and one belonged to Aarakshan Virodhi Party. The notification for the polls were announced on Saturday.

"Besides the four Independents, one candidate Sanjay Sharma filed his papers on behalf of Aarakshan Virodhi Party for the Ballabgarh Assembly seat in Faridabad district," Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Haryana, Shrikant Walgad, said in a statement.

He said that Independents, Jai Prakash Kaushik and Ramesh Verma, filed nominations from Bhiwani Assembly seat. Pankaj from Kosli assembly seat in Rewari district and Kusheshwar Bhagat filed nomination from Badshahpur Assembly seat in Gurgaon district.

About 1.61 crore voters would cast their votes at 16,244 polling stations to be set up in the state. The last day for nomination is September 27, scrutiny will take place the next day and withdrawals would end on October 1. The counting of votes will take place on October 19.

In the last Assembly polls, Congress had won 40 seats, INLD 31, BJP 4, HJC-BL 6, SAD and BSP one each and seven seats had gone to Independents. Though Bhupinder Singh Hooda had failed to lead the Congress to a majority in 2009, the Congress formed the government for the second time with the support of five of the six HJC-BL members and seven Independents.

Haryana is set to witness a multi-corner contest with key players-- Congress, BJP, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP), BSP, Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC)-Jan Chetna Manch (JCM) alliance-- all set to cross swords in the battle of ballot.