A last-minute scramble to beat the deadline saw the staging of 100 rallies by political parties as electioneering for the February 26 assembly election in Himachal Pradesh ended on Monday.

As many as 39,82,811 voters would decide the fate of 391 candidates in 65 constituencies of the state, while the three tribal snowbound constituencies would go to polls on June 8.

The field is tough for major political parties this time with the presence of over three dozen potential rebels and independents making the contest triangular in most of the constituencies.

While the Congress party expelled 23 rebels during the campaigning period, Bharatiya Janata Party avoided taking any such drastic step.

The campaign was marked by rallies by top national leaders, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani and All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi.

Vajpayee addressed four rallies, while Gandhi and Advani spoke at five and nine meetings respectively during the high-pitched electioneering, which went off peacefully barring a few complaints of violation of model code of conduct.

Senior leaders like Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Sahib Singh Verma, Anant Kumar, Shanta Kumar, Shatrughan Sinha, Vinod Khanna, and chief ministers, including Narendra Modi, Ajit Jogi, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Shiela Dixit and Amarinder Singh, criss-crossed the state addressing meetings.

As many as 63 out of 66 members of the dissolved state assembly, including Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, 15 members of the council of ministers, former chief minister Virbhadra Singh, Speaker Gulab Singh, Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee president Vidya Stokes, state BJP president Jai Krishan Sharma, HVC president Sukh Ram are in the fray.

Meanwhile, all arrangements have been made for the D-day with polling parties already being dispatched for their respective destinations. A wireless network linking 12 districts and 46 sub-divisional headquarters has been set up with the help of 1155 stations and 40,000 employees. Thirteen thousand police and home guard jawans have been deployed to ensure free and fair poll.

As many as ten companies of paramilitary forces have been requisitioned to man 5934 polling stations of which 548 have been declared as sensitive. Besides, 146 sector magistrates, 514 sector officers and 1629 vehicles have also been deployed on poll duty.