Haryana Assembly election 2019

The Haryana Legislative Assembly or the Haryana Vidhan Sabha is located in Chandigarh, which is the capital of the state. It comprises of 90 Members of Legislative Assembly, who are directly elected from single-seat constituencies, and the term of office is five years.

HISTORY:

The Haryana Vidhan Sabha, which was formed in 1966 from a part of the state of Punjab, by the Punjab Reorganisation Act, initially had 54 seats which were increased to 81 in March 1967, and to 90 seats in 1977, including 17 reserved seats. Since its formation, politics in the state has been predominantly nepotistic in nature. Haryana, after being separated from Punjab, first went to polls in 1967.

CURRENT:

The current Speaker of the House, since November 3, 2014, is BJP leader Kanwar Pal Gujjar, and the Deputy Speaker, since September 4, 2015, is Santosh Yadav of the BJP. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP became Leader of the House on October 26, 2014 after his party bagged 47 seats of the total 90 in the 2014 Assembly polls. The Leader of the Opposition, since September 4, 2019, is Bhupinder Singh Hooda of the Congress.

Four major parties had contested the 2014 election - the Indian National Congress, the Indian National Lok Dal, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Haryana Janhit Congress.

END OF TERM:

The term of the current Legislative Assembly expires on November 2, 2019, and parties are gearing up for the election which will be held in a single-phase on October 21, 2019 and the counting of votes will take place three days later i.e, on October 24, 2019. Haryana with its 90 seats has around 1.82 crore registered voters.

The last date for candidates to file their nomination papers has been given as October 4, 2019, and their papers will be scrutinised on October 5, 2019. Candidates who want to withdraw from the race can do so on or before October 7, 2019.