Ellenabad bypoll today, EC tries to ensure fool-proof arrangements

Ellenabad by-poll, which has turned into a multi-cornered battle, is set to take place today and the Election Commission has made all required arrangements to ensure the smooth conduct it smoothly. The ruling faction BJP-JJP and the opposition Congress are both aiming to add one more seat to their tally in the assembly. It is pertinent to mention that the Indiana National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala’s resignation in support of the farmers and against the three contentious agriculture laws, necessitated the by-poll and the party continues to claim the win the segment with such a huge margin that other parties’ candidates stand nowhere.

Political experts are eagerly waiting for the results of the election as the prestige of stalwarts from different parties is at stake and is likely to affect the political scenario of the state in future.

If we look at caste factor then what comes out is that Ellenabad is Jat-dominant seat with nearly 35 to 40 percent vote share and in view of this, the voters hailing from the community are most likely to affect the by-election. Keeping in view the mentioned above, all parties are on their toes to woo the Jat voters. The experts are of the opinion that in view of the ongoing farmers agitation, the voters hailing from this community are believed to be upset from the ruling faction to some extent which led to increasing troubles for the BJP-JJP.

Amid this, the main opposite party Congress is putting it’s best to get political mileage along with maximum jat votes. While the INLD is expecting the maximum votes from the community as most of the Jats are involved in the occupation of the agriculture and Abhay had resigned in support of the agrarian community. Apart from aforesaid, Schedule Cast (SC) and Other Backward Class (OBC) constitute nearly 36 percent of the vote bank – 22 percent and 24 percent respectively while rest voters fall under other categories.

In this series, it is worth mentioning that as many as 186103 voters do exist on the seat and out of these male and female voters are 99138 and 86984 respectively while one voter hails form transgender category. Among these, there are 313 Service Voters and the voters falling in this category are the army persons deployed in other states and unable to come to vote. So in view of the nature of their job and posting,they are allowed to cast their vote by the post. While as many as 368 voters belong to the Person With Disability (PWD) category and in view of this, the commission is required to make additional arrangements to ensure they can vote without facing any problem.

It is also worth stating that the state Election Commission has set a total of 211 polling booths.While, prior to this, as many as 190 polling booths were set up on the seat in the assembly elections held in 2019 but now the concerned body has decided to add 21 more booths to the previous number.