Campaigning for Uttarakhand's five Lok Sabha seats going to polls on April 11 came to an end Tuesday, with BJP and Congress top brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Rahul Gandhi, addressing a slew of rallies in different parts of the state over the past fortnight.
After the end of campaigning at 5 pm Tuesday evening, candidates will not be able to hold rallies to garner support for themselves, Chief Electoral Officer Saujanya said, adding they can go door to door in a peaceful way to contact voters.
All preparations for the April 11 polls in all the five Lok Sabha seats are complete, she said.
There are a total of 78,56,268 voters in Uttarakhand, including 3,71,220 women. Transgender voters are 259 whereas service voters are 90,845.
Haridwar has the highest number of voters at 18,40,732 while Almora has the lowest number of voters at 13,37,803, she said.
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The highest percentage of voters are in the age group of 30-39 years who constitute 27.4 per cent of voters whereas people above 80 years of age constitute 1.6 per cent of the electorate, the Chief Electoral Officer said.
A total of 11,229 polling booths have been set up across the state. Of total, 697 booths have been identified as sensitive and 656 as extra-sensitive.
A total of 45,696 security personnel, including police, Provincial Armed Constabulary and para military force, have been deployed to conduct free and fair polls, IG Police and Nodal officer Dipam Seth said.
Modi and Shah addressed two rallies each in the state after the announcement of the poll dates while the state leaders of the BJP and Congress held over two dozen rallies in different constituencies during the period.
The prime minister addressed rallies at Rudrapur and Dehradun while Shah addressed rallies in Uttarkashi and Dehradun. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh addressed rallies in Pithoragarh, Kashipur, Kotdwar and Jhabrera to drum up support in favour of party candidates.
Rahul Gandhi addressed rallies in Dehradun, Almora, Shrinagar and Haridwar over the past fortnight.
While the BJP highlighted the Balakot airstrikes, the Congress flogged on the Rafale deal to mobilise public opinion against the Narendra Modi government.
During the last leg of campaigning in the state, the BJP accused the Congress of corruption and attacked it for releasing a manifesto which promised reviewing the AFSPA and doing away with the anti-sedition law
As in past general elections, the Congress and the BJP are again locked in a straight contest in all the Lok Sabha seats of the state- Tehri, Pauri-Garhwal, Haridwar, Almora and Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar.
The BJP, which had won all the five seats from the state in 2014 general election, claims it will retain all of them.
Poll watchers opine intense campaigning by PCC president Pritam Singh, who is contesting from Tehri, and AICC general secretary Harish Rawat, who is trying his luck from Nainital, have left the BJP worried.
The BJP has renominated the sitting MP from Tehri and daughter-in-law of the erstwhile Tehri royal family Mala Rajya Lakshmi Shah from the seat. She has won it twice in the past, once in 2012 bypoll and then in 2014.
On both the occasions she had defeated former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna's son Saket Bahuguna.
Mala Rajya Lakshmi Shah, who is banking heavily on the traditional votes of the Tehri royal family loyalists, faces a stiff challenge from Pritam Singh.
Pritam Singh wields considerable influence among the Jaunsari tribal voters of Chakrata and adjoining areas.
In Nainital, Pradesh BJP president Ajay Bhatt will fight against Congress leader and former chief minister Harish Rawat. Bhatt is a debutante in the Lok Sabha polls while Rawat has a long legislative experience. He was a Union minister under the UPA before becoming the chief minister of the state in 2014.
Throwing her weight behind Rawat, Leader of Opposition in Uttarakhand Assembly Indira Hridayesh said she has held eight campaign meetings in her assembly constituency of Haldwani in support of Rawat.
An interesting contest is on the cards in Pauri where BJP sitting MP B C Khanduri's son Manish Khanduri is taking on his father's political disciple Tirath Singh Rawat.
Though pitted against each other, both of them claim to have B C Khanduri's blessings.
Congress Rajya Sabha MP Pradeep Tamta and sitting BJP MP Ajay Tamta once again face each other in Almora. Ajay Tamta had defeated Pradeep Tamta by nearly one lakh votes in 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Sitting BJP MP from Haridwar and former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank faces Congress's Ambarish Kumar who is contesting his first Lok Sabha polls.
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