After eight days of impatience and Exit-polls’ fear, the fate of 1,875 candidates in the fray for Rajasthan Assembly polls from 199 seats will be sealed tomorrow (December 3) with the counting votes. With the moment of reckoning drawing closer with each passing hour the political climate in the state is heating up.
Everyone, including the contestants and their supporters are waiting with bated breath for the moment when the EVMs will be opened on Sunday.
In all 75.45 per cent of 5.26 crore electorate exercised their franchise in 51,507 polling booths to elect the 16th legislative assembly of the state.
Election to one seat of Karanpur was postponed after the death of a Congress candidate, Gurmeet Kunnar, early this month. The turnout for polling was about 0.74 per cent more than the voting reported in the 2018 assembly polls.
At stake are the political stakes of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, and other bigwigs like Sachin PIlot, CP Joshi, Govind Singh Dotasara, 26 Congress ministers and BJP’s Vasundhara Raje and Rajendra Rathore.
The counting scheduled to start at 8 am on Sunday will also decide the fate of seven sitting BJP MPs and one RLP MP.
The Election Commission has designated 36 centres for counting of votes in the state. There will be two counting centres each in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Nagaur. In the remaining 30 districts there will be one centre each, state’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Praveen Gupta said on Saturday.
The counting start with postal ballots at 8 am and EVM counting will begin at all centres at 8:30 am under a three-tier security.
Apart from the two major political parties, Congress and BJP, BSP’s 188 candidates, AAP’s 87, Rashtriya Loktantrik Party’s (RLP) 77, Bhartiya Tribal Party (BTP) 5 and CPI-M’s 17 contestants have contested the election. Out of a total of 1,875 candidates, the Congress has fielded 200 (with one alliance of RLD), BJP 200, Independents 737, BSP 185, AAP 86, RLD 78, and CPI-M Three.