The 90-member Haryana assembly goes to polls on October 21 and the counting of votes will take place on October 24. There are 1.82 crore registered voters in the state out of which 1.07 lakh are service voters.
The process of filing nominations for Haryana began on September 27. The last date of filing nominations is October 4 and the scrutiny will take place on October 5. The candidates can withdraw their nomination till October 7.
The main contest is between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress with two main regional parties, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), also in the fray.
Here are some of the key candidates from Haryana assembly elections:
Manohar Lal Khattar: The incumbent Haryana chief minister is contesting from his current Karnal seat. BJP is counting on the 65-year-old leader’s persona and performance to win 75 of the 90 seats up for grabs in Haryana after the party sweep the state's 10 Lok Sabha seats. The non-Jat chief minister has turned the long-entrenched caste calculus on its head, consolidating non-Jat, urban vote bank, which roughly constitutes 60 percent of the electorate.
Captain Abhimanyu: Haryana finance minister has been given ticket from his current Narnaund assembly seat.
Aditya Devi Lal: BJP has fielded former Prime Minister Choudhary Devi Lal’s grandson from family pocket-borough of Dabwali. The assembly constituency on the border of Punjab and Haryana is set to witness a family fight between the present INLD chief and former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, the JJP headed by Om Prakash’s grandson Dushyant Chautala and Aditya Chautala.
Satpal Sangwan: The former Congress leader and minister recently joined the JJP and has been fielded from Dadri. Active in state politics since 1996 and a veteran of five assembly polls, Sangawan first won the 1996 elections on Haryana Vikas Party ticket, an outfit floated by former chief minister Bansi Lal. In 2009, he won from Dadri as a Haryana Janhit Congress party but later defected to the Congress and was inducted in Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led government as a cooperative minister.
Babita Phogat: Wrestler-turned-politician Babita Phogat joined BJP in mid-August and has been nominated by the party to contest from Dadri assembly seat. She quit the post of police sub-inspector after joining the BJP with her father Mahavir Singh Phogat. Phogat had won a gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Ishwar Singh: Another Congress leader who recently switched to Dushyant Chautala's JJP last week. Ishwar Singh served as a Rajya Sabha member of the Congress from 2008 to 2014. He earlier represented Guhla, a reserved constituency, from 1977 to 1982.
Sandeep Singh: Former Indian hockey captain will be the party candidate from Pehowa.
Subhash Barala: The BJP state president will contest from Tohana.
Yogeshwar Dutt: Another wrestler-turned-politician and Olympic medallist will fight from the Baroda seat on BJP ticket. Dutt won the bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics in the Men's 60kg Freestyle wrestling. He also won the gold medals in Commonwealth and Asian championships.
First Published: IST