Voters were seen lining up at polling stations as 62 per cent of the electorate in Jharkhand on Thursday voted for the six Lok Sabha seats from the state.
Officials said 62 per cent had voted and added added that Ranchi witnessed 58.76 per cent polling, Jamshedpur 65 per cent, Giridih 62.03 per cent, Khuti 61.04 per cent, Hazaribagh 61.01 and Singhbhum 62.73 per cent.
Polling for six Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand began as scheduled at 7 am on Thursday and will closed at 4 pm. Maoist guerrillas have called for a poll boycott.
The six seats for which the polling is taking place are Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Chaibasa, Khuti, Giridih and Hazaribagh. Maoist guerrillas have significant presence in all the six constituencies.
A total of 8,525,179 voters will decide the political fate of 106 candidates in these six constituencies.
“The new electors in the age group of 18-19 years are 388,301. The voting will take place at 10,177 polling stations. Of these, 2,779 are highly sensitive, 3,070 are sensitive," an Election Commission official said.
The commission had appointed 1,946 micro observers to monitor the polling.
Of the total number of the polling booths, 763 were covered with video cameras, 1,194 with still cameras and 600 through webcasting.
Around 45,000 security personnel drawn from para-military forces, state police, and home guards were deployed.
Six choppers were also being used during the election, of which two were deployed for air surveillance.
In Bokaro which falls under Giridh LS seat, a CRPF party came under Maoist attack when the rebels triggered two landmine blasts at Lalpania near rebel-affected Jhumra Hills, injuring three jawans - Pratap Singh, Surendra Kumar and PC Mandal and driver Ranjit kumar, CRPF (26th Battalion) Commandant Sanjay Kumar said.
In a separate attack on security forces at Tulbul village at Jhumra Hills in Bokaro district, the Maoists opened fire on a patrolling part of the para-military force, injuring a jawan. A brief encounter took place before the ultras retreated.
The rebels also blew up a stretch of railway track between Dania railway station in Bokaro and Jageshwar station of Bihar under South Eastern Railway disrupting train services, Bokaro Superintendent of Police Jitendra Kumar Singh said.
A pressure cooker bomb was recovered near a polling booth in naxal-hit Saranda forest range of the state, an hour before polling began in Singhbhum (ST) constituency. A report from Giridih said the Maoists exploded ten bombs at separate places in Giridh Lok Sabha constituency where polling is on.
The fate of seven legislators, former minister and Congress Ranchi MP Subodh Kanat Sahay, Deputy speaker of Lok Sabha and BJP sitting MP Karia Munda, senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha's son Jayant Sinha will be decided.
In the 2009 polls, the Congress won in Ranchi and Independent candidate and former chief minister Madhu Koda won the Chaibasa seat. The BJP bagged the remaining four seats.
The other key candidates are former deputy chief minister and All Jharkhand Students Union president Sudesh Mahto, and former IPS official Amitabh Chaudhary, who is the president of Jharkhand State Cricket Association. Both of them were contesting from Ranchi.
Jharkhand, which has 14 Lok Sabha seats, had its first phase polling in four constituencies on April 10 and will have its third and final phase on April 24 in four more seats.
(With agency inputs)
Comments
0 comment