Campaigning ends for last phase of elections
Campaigning ended for last phase — May 10 — with parties making last-ditch efforts to win votes.
The three main parties contesting the elections-- Congress, BJP and INLD are making last ditch efforts to woo voters before the polls scheduled for Monday.
Seeking re-election Congress' Pawan Kumar Bansal, BJP's Satya Pal Jain and INLD's Harmohan Dhawan were leaving nothing to chance and are making all out efforts to reach out to maximum number of voters as possible.
Chandigarh, which has a population of about a million, is witnessing a straight fight this time between Congress and BJP.
The stakes are high as in the 1999 Parliamentary polls Saffron party's late leader Krishan Lal Sharma had been defeated by Bansal by a thin margin of 5449 votes.
The constituency has 405 polling stations with 5,03,930 registered voters including 2,24,979 women.
This time there are 17 candidates in the fray including a lone woman. As many as 409 extra EVMs would be put in place to accomodate the 17th candidate/political party as a single EVM can have names of only 16.
With polling percentage steadily declining from a healthy 68 per cent in 1984 to about 48 per cent in the previous elections, political parties are hoping that this time more number of peo ple will come out to vote.