Gujarat civic polls see better turnout

Less than half of the electorate in Gujarat on Sunday cast their ballots in six of the eight municipal corporations in the state, amid allegations of tampering with the voter roll.No major untoward incident was, however, reported from any part of the state which has seen strong protests from the Patels for reservation.

While voting was stalled at a station in Vadodara for about 20 minutes due to a technical glitch in an EVM, a middle-aged man fainted ahead of polling at a centre in Ahmedabad.
According to reports, the average turnout of voters in the first phase of the two-phase local body election was 47 per cent, which is higher than the figure (43.68 per cent) turnout in the 2010 polls.

Over 95 lakh people were eligible to cast their votes in the first phase in which 572 seats in 143 wards in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar municipal corporations went to the polls.

The BJP is in power in each of these civic bodies. The highest turnout was registered in Rajkot (50 per cent), followed by Bhavnagar 49 per cent, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Jamangar (all 47 per cent) and Surat (44 per cent). Of the total 12,616 booths, the State Election Commission (SEC) declared 5,271 sensitive and 2,769 critically sensitive and deployed extra security forces.

BJP patriarch L K Advani, Gujarat Chief Minister Aanandiben Patel and BJP president Amit Shah cast their votes in this phase. On charges of widespread tampering of voter rolls, Opposition Congress alleged many of the names in the voting list those were there during the last Parliamentary polls and even till about two days ago, were cancelled using red stamps.