Eastern suburbs record over 50% voter turnout
The Mumbai North East Assembly constituencies — Mulund, Vikroli, Bhandup (West), Ghatkopar (East) and (West) — recorded more than 50 per cent voter turnout on Monday.
According to the polling officer, of all the six constituencies Bhandup West witnessed 53.04% voter turnout, highest as compared to the other five constituencies. Mulund recorded 49.43% voting, the least among other north east constituencies.
Additional collector of Mumbai suburban district Vivek Gaikwad commented, “The voting was held in a fair and transparent manner. No single complaint was received by any of our polling officer about Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) rigging or any other technical snag. Voting was conducted peacefully across the district.”
Avinash Bhagwat, a firsttime voter expressed his happiness. He said, “As I turned 18-year-old I immediately enrolled my name for voting. The process was easy, I suggest every individual who is above 18 years should come out and vote. We cannot criticise the government until we exercise our voting rights.”
While several youngsters and senior citizens came out in large numbers to vote for their candidate. In Mulund, 86-year-old Gunanwantiben Somaiya, mother of former BJP lawmaker Kirit Somaiya, cast vote along with her family. She has been voting since 1952, the first general election held after the Independence. Another family in Bhandup who voted said, “We want our representative to provide us good infrastructure, better roads, world-class education and better medical facilities. These are the main issues we have voted for the candidate.”
The main contenders in the six assembly constituencies are Kotecha Mihir (BJP), Govind Singh (Congress), Harshala Rajesh Chavan (MNS) in Mulund.
Likewise, in Vikroli, Sunil Raut (Shiv Sena), Vinod Shinde Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Siddharth Mokle Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and Dhananjay Sadashiv Pisal Congress are the candidates.
In Bhandup West, Ramesh Gajanan Korgaonkar (Shiv Sena), Koparkar Harishchandra (Congress), Sandeep Prabhakar Jalgaonkar from MNS are the contenders.
In Ghatkopar West, Anand Shukla (Congress) and Ram Kadam (BJP) while in Ghatkopar East Parag Shah (BJP), Satish Pawar (MNS) and Manisha Suryavanshi (Congress) are in the electoral fray.