Brisk polling in 51 assembly, 2 LS seats
Arunachal Pradesh’s Khonsa (West) registers turnout of over 90%; Uttar Pradesh records lowest among states with 47%
NEWDELHI: Polling for 51 assembly seats in 16 states, including Kerala, Telangana, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan among others, and the union territory of Puducherry, took place on Monday with polling percentages ranging between 47.66% (Uttar Pradesh) and 92.94% (Arunachal Pradesh), according to provisional figures provided by the Election Commission of India’s Voter Turnout app as of 10pm on Monday. Polling was also held in the Lok Sabha seats of Bihar’s Samastipur and Maharashtra’s Satara.
Results will be declared on Thursday along with those of the assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana held on Monday. Read highlights from some of the main states that polled.
UTTAR PRADESH
UP election commission officials said that the voting percentage in the 11 assembly segments was 47.05% by 6pm. Of the 11 assembly segments that polled on Monday, the most watched was Rampur Sadar, from where Azam Khan’s wife, Tazeen Fatima, contested. The seat saw the detention of 20 fake polling agents and the administration also detained three women booth level officers for indulging in alleged electoral malpractices. District magistrate Anjaney Kumar Singh said in all 20 polling agents were detained and were being interrogated.
The by-polls were necessitated because the sitting MLAs on these seats won the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and vacated their assembly seats. Barring Rampur and Jalalpur, all the seats were held by the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which swept the general elections held earlier this year.
The Central Paramilitary Forces and civil police were deployed to maintain law and order during the polling. A total of 41.908 lakh voters are listed in these seats.
BIHAR
Barring a few incidents of poll boycott and skirmishes between two groups, bypolls for the Samastipur Lok Sabha seat and five assembly constituencies on Monday went off peacefully and the overall turnout stood at 50.31% as of 10pm. A total of 15 persons from Siwan and Banka were arrested for trying to create disturbance.
The police also seized ~84,000 in cash in Banka. Bihar’s chief elector officer H R Srinivasa said villagers of Sahiyar Dih boycotted polls following failure of the government to construct a road.
The assembly by-polls were necessitated by the sitting legislators getting elected to Lok Sabha. Ruling Janta Dal (United) is locked into a contest with rival Rashtriya Janta Dal in four assembly segments that got vacated due to the election of two ministers and two legislators to the Lok Sabha.
GUJARAT
Voting in six assembly seats in Gujarat was about 53.68 % till 10 pm in a two corner contest between the BJP and the Congress. According to Election Commission baring minor incidents polling was peaceful.
Four seats from north GujaratBayad, Kheralu, Radhanpur and Tharad and two seats of central Gujarat including Amraiwadi and Lunawada went to by-polls.
The focus, however, was the north Gujarat rural seats of Radhanpur and Bayad, from where the BJP had fielded Congress rebels Alpesh Thakor and Dhavalsinh Jhala. The two had resigned in July after cross voting in Rajya Sabha elections.
In last assembly election, the Congress won 79 seats of total 182 and the BJP for the first time in 25 years was limited to two digit figure of 99. But in last two years, with the help of defectors, the BJP managed to cover the ground as 10 of the Congress MLAs have resigned and joined the saffron party taking the party’s tally to 110 and reducing Congress to 69.
NORTH-EAST
The four Assembly constituencies in Assam recorded an average turnout of 75.69%, 92.94% came out to vote in Khonsa West in Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya saw an 84.56% voter turnout, while bypolls at three assembly seats in Sikkim saw a turnout of 69.97% as of 10pm.
OTHER STATES
The bypolls to the five assembly constituencies in Kerala was marred by heavy rains, especially in Ernakulam, but was incident free, election officials said.
The polling percentage at Rajasthan was 65.95%. Dharamshala and Pachhad assembly constituencies in Himachal Pradesh recorded 68.76%.
The bypolls for 15 Karnataka seats will be held on December 5.