70% turnout in second phase of panchayat polls
KARNAL: Voting for the 2nd phase of the elections to the zila parishads and panchayat samitis in nine districts of Haryana was held peacefully on Wednesday with a voter turnout of 70.3%.
As per the data from the State Election Commission, out of the total 48.39 lakh voters, 33.48 lakh exercised their franchise to elect 1,244 members of panchayat samitis and 158 of the zila parishad in 57 blocks of 9 districts. The highest 75.3% voter turnout was reported in Gurugram followed by 73% in Sirsa, 72.2% in Rewari, 71.9% in Kurukshetra, 70.3% each in Charkhi Dadri, 70.2% in Karnal, 68.7 in Ambala, 65.7% in Rohtak and 60.2% in Sonepat.
There were 5,963 polling stations in these 9 districts, out of which 976 were sensitive and 1,023 highly sensitive. The polling began at 7 am and continued till 6 pm. The results will be declared on November 27 after the completion of all the three phases.
Karnal deputy commissionercum-returning officer Anish Yadav said that the voting remained peaceful as over 70% voters cast their votes to decide the fate of 750 candidates contesting for 239 seats of panchayat samiti and 25 Seats of zila parishad members in the district.
Kurukshetra superintendent of police Surinder Singh Bhoria said that the polling remained peaceful as no incident of violence was reported at all the 652 polling booths in the district, including 93 hypersensitive and 74 sensitive booths in the district. He said that 2,300 police officials were deployed to conduct the polls peacefully. Polling for the post of members of 15 wards of zila parishad and 123 wards of block samitis was held peacefully in the Ambala district. Over 68% voting was recorded in the district at 599 polling booths, where out of 3,19,488 people cast their vote till 7 pm.
Two cases of technical glitches were reported in Ambala-1 and Shahzadpur blocks, where the voters and supporters of the candidates protested against the issue. Deputy commissioner Priyanka Soni said, “in Dhurkra village, the voting began nearly an hour late and continued smoothly, while there was no delay reported at Fatehgarh village. At all other polling booths, the voting remained peaceful.”
The electronic voting machine (EVM) was changed at former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s native village Sanghi due to malfunction.
Due to this, the voting process was halted for nearly 20 minutes. No incident of violence was reported in the region and voting was held peacefully.