Elaborate security is in place for Kairana Assembly by-election with the entire voting process in all polling booths would be manned by Central forces.
To instill confidence among the voters, the central paramilitary forces also holds flag marches in the sensitive areas on Tuesday, which witnessed communal riots last year. The voting will start from 7am on Wednesday and would end at 6pm. District Administration also declared local holiday in the entire district in view of polling on Wednesday.
According to reports, a total of 12 companies of paramilitary forces along with 1000 civil policemen has been deployed to ensure free and fair polls.
Authorities have set up 16 check-posts at the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border and sealed the border to ensure smooth and fair conduct of elections. The checkposts have been established at Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur and Shamli districts. Authorities also erected 48 check-posts on borders touching other districts like in Shamli, Saharanpur, Baghpat, Gautam Budhnagar, Mathura and Aligarh. All the check-posts started functioning on Monday evening and the process would be continued till Wednesday night. Security has been also tightened along the border since assembly polls in Haryana will be conducted the same day.
Kairana constituency is divided in 42 sectors and a magistrate and a police officer has been posted in each of them. Though fate of eight candidates would be decided in the bypolls, prominent nominees are BJP’s Anil Kumar Chauhan, Congress nominee Arshad Khan and Samajwadi Party candidate Nahid Hasan. The campaigning was lacklustre with no prominent leaders of any political party came to address election meetings except for BJP state president laxmikant Bajpai. All the prominent candidates are local with Congress and SP candidates were having family relations.
Altogether 2,82,130 voters including 1,26,194 women are eligible to exercise their votes in the by-poll to be held at 275 polling booths. Counting of votes would be held on October 19. The seat fell vacant after BJP member Hukum Singh was elected to the lok Sabha from Kairana parliamentary seat.