NEW DELHI : 67.78% voting on Monday as 13 constituencies went to polls in the fourth phase of LokSabha elections. This is about 4% higher than the 2014 general election.
Rajasthan chief electoral officer Anand Kumar said the turnout was highest in any LokSabha election in the state.
Polling was largely peaceful with three incidents of clash between groups in Jalore and Barmer. EVM and VVPAT glitches were reported from some places, leading to replacement of 49 EVMS and 305 VVPAT machines, Kumar said.
Four polling personnel died on the voting day in Rajsamand, Udaipur, Ajmer and Jodhpur, said the CEO.
A presiding officer in Kota parliamentary constituency was suspended because he was found drunk during duty at a polling booth.ThirteenLokSabhaconstituencies that went to polls on Monday are in the Marwar, Mewar and Hadauti regions of the state. The remaining 12 seats of Rajasthan will vote on May 6, the fifth phase of LokSabha election. The votes will be counted on May 23.
Director general of police, law and order, Mohan Lal Lather said, “No major untoward incident was reported across state except one or two minor incidents which were resolved immediately. Polling was mostly peaceful.”
More than 68,000 security personnel, including 140 companies of central armed police forces,21,000 home guards, 1,000 forest guards, 1,980 border home guards, were deployed across state for peaceful voting, Lather added.
In Barmer, the general observer of the election commission of India issued an appeal on social media to people to not disclose whom they have voted for. “Not maintaining secrecy of your vote can land you in jail for 5 years,” Sunil Kumar said after pictures of VVPAT machines after voting began circulating on social media in the district.
In Jhalawar, former chief minister VasundharaRaje complained against power outage in a polling booth, leading to delay in voting. District election officer SidharthaSihag said power supply was restored within half an hour and polling resumed.
There were 30 complaints about EVMS within the first 40 minutes of polling, which started at 7am, as voters queued outside booths in the 13 or the 25 constituencies of the desert state.
Among the 13 seats that went to polls today, Jodhpur and Barmer are the most keenly watched electoral battles. In Jodhpur, chief minister Ashok Gehlot’s son VaibhavGehlot is making his debut against BJP’S Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. For Congress, Gehlot has campaigned alone, and for the BJP, Prime Minister NarendraModi addressed a public meeting and national president Amit Shah did a road show for Shekhawat.
In Barmer, Congress leader Manvendra Singh is taking on BJP’S KailashChoudhary, who has been an MLA in the last Assembly. Singh is son of BJP’S founder member and former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, and joined the Congress before the December 2018 Assembly election. He contested against VasundharaRaje in Jhalrapatan constituency, and lost.In the last general election, the BJP won all the 25 LokSabha seats in Rajasthan.
In Assembly poll, the Congress bagged 100 out of the 200 seats and the BJP got 73.
The ruling party in the state is looking to ride on the assembly poll win to better its tally in the national election this time. And, the BJP hopes to buck the trend that the party which wins the assembly election gets a majority of the LokSabha seats in Rajasthan.
