All is set for the big day in Rohru and Jawali Assembly constituencies, which are going to polls on Saturday. The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are in a direct contest to clinch the two seats with 70,416 and 75,541 electors, respectively.

A total of 118 polling teams in Rohru and 91 in Jawali have reached the polling booths, amid heavy security. Police and Home Guards personnel have been posted for a fair and peaceful election.

In Rohru, a polling party travelled at least 14 kilometres on foot from the nearest motorable road to reach the polling station in Pandar in the interiors of Dodra Kawar. Five other parties, too, reached their respective booths after long treks, said Chief Electoral Officer Anil Khachi.

In Rohru, Congress’ Manjit Singh Thakur and BJP’s Khushi Ram Balnatah are in the fray besides two Independents.

The administration of Shimla district is high on preparation and caution in Rohru. The contest here for the first time has boiled down to a close one under the BJP rule in the state, after 19 years of Congress dominance in the constituency. The superintendent of police and the deputy commissioner of Shimla have already reached Rohru, where 24 polling booths have been declared as hyper sensitive against 17 in Jawali.

Talking to The Indian Express, Khachi said: “The election is expected to be peaceful and there are no reports of any possible disturbance on the election day.”

The BJP and the Congress, meanwhile, remained busy conducting door-to-door campaigning in the area on Friday.

In its final bid to wrest the seat from the Congress, the BJP has been distributing pamphlets in Rohru to remind the people about the rift within the Congress and Virbhadra Singh’s initial reluctance to campaign here after his wife was denied the ticket. The pamphlets carry a copy of a news report published in a vernacular fortnightly supported by Virbhadra Singh. The report titled “Kaul Singh aur Vidya Stokes ne Diya Balnatah ko Diwali ka tohfa (Congress’ Kaul Singh and Vidya Stokes gave Diwali gift to BJP candidate Khushi Ram Balnatah in Rohru)” hints at the heartburn in a section of the Congress over the allotment of ticket.

In Jawali, the main contest is between Baldev Raj Chaudhary of the BJP and Sujan Singh Pathania of the Congress, besides Independent candidate Madan Lal, a BJP dissident.