Voting peaceful amid reports of EVM and VVPAT malfunctioning in Dholpur bypoll
GOOD TURNOUT 77% polling registered, a 3% drop from 80% recorded in assembly polls in 2013; proposal for repoll at one booth sent to ECI
for the Dholpur assembly bypoll was peaceful amid reports of electronic voting machine (EVM) and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trial (VVPAT) malfunctions at some booths, said Rajasthan’s chief electoral officer Ashwini Bhagat.
“The malfunctioning machines were promptly replaced,” he added. Bhagat said that his office has sent a proposal for a re-poll at booth No. 163 in Dholpur city to the Election Commission of India as the polling party had not cleared the mock drill data.
Voting at 25 polling booths was webcast to the control room at district collector’s office for a fair election, he added.
The by-poll for Dholpur Assembly seat was necessitated after Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator Banwari Lal Kushwaha was disqualified for conviction in a murder case last year.
Polling across 231 booths began at 7am with a lukewarm response from voters. In first two hours, only 15% votes were polled, but polling picked up later in the day. Till 6pm, around 77.26% polling was recorded. It was slightly lower than the over 80% reported in the 2013 state assembly elections.
Polling was interrupted at booth No. 158, 159 and 163 for more than two hours due to an EVM malfunction. Malfunction of VVPAT machines was reported from some booths in the Saipau sub-division.
Congress candidate Banwari Lal Sharma and his family cast their vote in Pachgaon village while BJP candidate Sobha Rani Kushwaha cast her vote in Jamalpur village.
Chief Minister’s son and BJP MP from Jhalawar-Baran Dushyant Singh cast his vote at the PWD Office polling booth. His wife, Niharika Singh, was also with him. The BJP MP said that the people will vote for development and will elect their party’s candidate from Dholpur.
Police arrested a Congress agent, Rajkumar, for alleged irregularities at booth No. 134 in Kasimpur village. “He was arrested under section 151 of the CrPC and is in our custody,” said Dholpur SP Rajesh Singh.
Bhagat said more than 1,500 people were part of the polling process apart from 2,300 police personnel, including paramilitary forces, state police and home guards. Seventy micro-observers were also deployed.
All measures helped in achieving free and fair polls, Bhagat said. The officer said there was unprecedented participation by the youth in the election. “We added more than 10,000 new voters, most of them young,” he said.
Chief minister Vasundhara Raje appealed to the people of the constituency, through a tweet, to exercise their franchise.
Counting will take place on April 13. The main contest is between the ruling BJP’s candidate Shobha Rani Kushavah, wife of the convicted BSP leader, and Congress party’s Banwari Lal Sharma, a former minister. Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot on Sunday expressed confidence of his party’s win in high- stakes Dholpur assembly by-election, saying people have voted against the ruling BJP and for the alternative in Congress.
CM Vasundhara Raje has rendered the election a high profile by campaigning there vigorously for days besides getting most of her ministers to canvass intensively in her home turf.
Pilot too matched her by holding over 200 public meetings and spending over 18 days in the backward region as a win for the Congress will be a big boost to the opposition party ahead of the state assembly polls next year.
The Congress had suffered a rout in 2013 assembly polls and then complete decimation in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when it did not win a single seat out of 25, but is seen to have recovered some ground under Pilot who led the party to a good show in local elections. A win in the by-poll will be a big boost to him, observers say.
“I am confident of a Congress win in the election. People have voted for strengthening the alternative in the Congress and against the BJP government,” he said.