Wednesday, February 2 2005 23:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Amidst deployment of over 570 companies of Central para-troopers and armed police and aerial surveillance in Naxal-hit areas, the stage is set for one-day Assembly polls in Haryana and for the first phase of the exercise in Bihar and Jharkhand tomorrow (Feb 3, 3005).

Shoot-at-sight orders were issued in Bihar as security was beefed up in all the three States to ensure peaceful balloting for all the 90 Assembly seats in Haryana, 64 in Bihar and 24 in Jharkhand.

Altogether 262 companies of Central para-military forces and armed police fanned out in Bihar, 214 in Jharkhand, which is holding its maiden Assembly polls, and 95 in Haryana as choppers were pressed into service to patrol the skies in view of poll boycott calls by Naxalites in the two Eastern States.

The curtain was rung down last evening on the no-holds-barred electioneering which saw star campaigners, including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and BJP veterans Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, criss-crossing several constituencies in the three States to woo voters.

Abduction of school children and the law and order situation in Bihar became a major poll issue, which gave headache to ruling RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) and bolstered hopes of the Opposition NDA (National Democratic Alliance).

Congress, locked in friendly fights with RJD in many constituencies, too slammed the Rabri Devi Government on the law and order front.

RJD supremo Laloo Prasad dismissed the criticism as the handiwork of his political opponents and claimed the State had made a lot of progress under the RJD dispensation.