68.50% voting in DK ULB polls

The fate of 250 candidates, contesting for 89 seats in the urban local bodies of Puttur, Ullal and Bantwal put together, is now sealed in electronic voting machines.

During the election held on Friday, voters from Puttur City Municipal Council (CMC), Ullal CMC and Bantwal Town Municipal Corporation (TMC) limits, exercised their franchise. The polling was peaceful in the district.

The counting of votes will be held in the taluk offices of Puttur, Bantwal and Bharat High School at Ullal on September 3.

Dakshina Kannada district recorded 68.50% polling. The percentage of voting in Puttur, Ullal and Bantwal at the end of the voting day was 68.69%, 65.36% and 72.36% respectively. At 9 am, the percentage of voting was 14.98%, 14.21% and 15.69% respectively.

Bantwal recorded the highest voting percentage while Ullal, the lowest.

The total number of voters in the three urban local bodies was 1,17,979 and among these, 80,820 have cast their votes.

Puttur

There are 77 candidates contesting in the 31 wards of Puttur CMC.

Forty-one booths were set up for polling. A total of 27,299 out of the 39,745 voters cast their votes. This includes 13,206 are men and 14,093 are women.

Ullal

A total of 102 candidates were in the fray in the 31 wards of Ullal CMC. There were 43 polling booths and 172 staff on election duty. Among 44,132 voters, 28,845 people cast their vote including 13,678 men and 15,077 women.

Bantwal

There are 71 candidates in the fray for the 27 seats of Bantwal TMC.

Thirty-two polling booths were set up and 24,676 people cast their votes against the total number of 34,102 voters, including 11,840 men and 12,836 women.

Objection filed

Confusion prevailed as the EVM at Parladka Higher Primary School was found to be faulty during the trial voting. At the beginning of the dummy voting, six out of 10 votes were converted to NOTA.

Congress candidate Pushpalatha’s husband, who was also her election agent, filed an objection with the booth-level officer and demanded that the EVM be replaced. However, the fault was not found during the third round of trial voting. Therefore, the same EVM was used for the polling process. There was a 15-minute delay in commencement of polling, due to the ambiguity.

Low turnout

A low turn out of voters was seen at several polling booths in Ullal in the morning.

Abdul Khader, an ailing senior citizen, exercised his franchise at the polling booth in Ombattukere.

Khader, a resident of Mukkaccheri could not walk on his own and he came to the booth with the help of his family member.