Haryana seeks over 200 Central forces companies

Chandigarh: Haryana has sought over 200 companies of the Central forces to ensure conduct of free, fair and peaceful polling as the election for all 90 Assembly seats in the state will be held on October 1.

Addressing a news conference here, Haryana’s Chief Electoral Officer Pankaj Agarwal said the state has demanded 225 companies of the Central forces, of which 70 have been already allotted.

The Election Commission had earlier on Friday announced that polls to the 90-member Haryana Assembly will be held on October 1 and the results would be declared on October 4.

With the announcement of polls, the Model Code of Conduct has come into force in the state. Agarwal said the state has over 2.03 crore voters.

Among the general electors, over 1.07 crore are males while over 95 lakh are females while 455 are transgender voters. Among the service voters, 1,04,456 are males and 4,748 are females. The voters aged 85 above are 2,42,818 while 9,554 are aged above 100. Similarly, there are 1,49,387 voters with disabilities. The voters falling in the 18-19 years group are 4,82,896 while 41,52,806 fall in the 20-29 age group.

Agarwal said the notification for the polls will be issued on September 5 and September 12 will be last date of filing the nominations.

The last date of scrutiny of nominations is September 13 while the last date of withdrawal of candidature will be September 16. Agarwal said there will be 20,629 polling booths in the state, of which 7,132 will be in the urban areas and 13,497 in the rural areas. These polling booths have been set up at 10,495 locations across the state, he added.

He further said that Haryana has 90 Assembly constituencies, out of which 17 are reserved constituencies.

Replying to a question, he said, we expect all parties to adhere to the Model Code of Conduct.

According to an official statement, the candidates and political parties must publicly disclose any criminal background of their candidates in newspapers and on TV news channels at least three times. This information must be published between August 16 and September 30. The political parties must also display this information on their official websites as well.