Campaigning for HP polls ends, hill state all set to vote on November 12

Campaigning for the 68 assembly seats of Himachal Pradesh to be held on November 12 ended today.

Both the major parties of the state, the Congress and the BJP, fielded their stalwarts on the last day, and the hype came to an end with the Congress's announcement to restore the old pension scheme and the BJP's announcement to give free scooties to girls if voted to power.

In this election, while the BJP is asking for votes by imposing Hindutva in the election on the basis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the creation of a committee to delve into Uniform Civil Code and Waqf properties, the Congress has made development-oriented promises.

The biggest promise of the Congress is to restore the old pension, to give jobs to one lakh youth as soon as the new government is formed, to give a monthly allowance of three thousand rupees to women, etc.

412 candidates are in the fray in the elections for a total of 68 seats in Himachal, including 24 women candidates. A total of 7,881 polling stations have been set up for voting on November 12, most of them in rural areas. The number of rural polling stations is 7,235 while 646 polling stations are in urban areas.

The booth with the highest number of voters is in Kangra where 1625 voters will be able to cast their votes, while the booth with the lowest number of voters is in Lahaul Spiti where a booth has been set up for a total of 92 voters.

The total number of voters in Himachal is about 56 lakh. Among them, the number of women voters is 27,37,845, the number of male voters is 28,54,945. There are also 1,93,000 voters in the age group of 18-19 years.

If you look at the caste equation of voters in Himachal, the number of upper caste voters is more here. Among them, Rajputs are 37.5 percent, Brahmins are 18 percent voters. At the same time, the number of Dalit voters is 26.6 percent and Gaddi caste voters are 1.5 percent. The number of OBC and other voters is 16.5 percent.

Teams of Central security forces have been deployed for the Himachal Pradesh elections. 67 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces have been deployed to conduct peaceful polling in the state on behalf of the Centre. They include about 6,700 jawans. 15 companies of CRPF have also been included in these. The Election Commission had asked the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to deploy 67 companies this time.

In the last election, 65 companies of the Central Armed Forces were deployed.