GUWAHATI, April 9 � Campaign for the second phase of the Assembly polls in the State came to an end this afternoon.
The period saw a number of high-profile campaigners of both the Congress and the BJP doing their rounds in the State. While Congress president Sonia Gandhi attended a party rally in Guwahati and Dhubri yesterday, the other party bigwigs who were here during campaign for the second phase included Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P Chidambaram, and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
The State goes to the second phase of the election on April 11which will witness polling in 64 constituencies.
The BJP's star campaigners included party former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, former Union minister Arun Jaitley, and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi besides TV personality Smriti Irani.
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar was also in the State to put his weight behind the CPM.
The city too witnessed hectic electioneering on the last day of the campaign, with processions and rallies taken out by different political parties through different thoroughfares.
The citizens had to endure a lot of hardship during the campaign period as a large number of city buses were requisitioned by the political parties to carry their supporters for holding rallies. The few city buses that plied during these days were invariably overcrowded.
A total of 496 candidates are in the fray for the second phase in which 96,78,720 voters will cast their votes. Four hundred eighty five candidates contested for 62 seats in the first phase.
Meanwhile, security arrangements have been beefed up for the second phase of the polls. Even though the first phase passed off peacefully with few untoward incidents, the administration is leaving nothing to chance and adequate security forces would man all the polling stations on poll day, a senior official said.
A total of 2,033 and 4,175 polling stations have been identified as hyper-sensitive and sensitive for the second phase of polls.
