New Delhi: Nearly 110 million people peacefully voted on Thursday in 117 Lok Sabha constituencies in 12 states in a staggered election that will see three more rounds to decide who gets to govern India the next five years.
Some 60 per cent of the 180 million electorate exercised their franchise in 201,735 centres to elect 117 MPs from 2,098 candidates, from political parties big and small as well as innumerable independents, in the sixth phase of massive elections.
“Polling was largely peaceful barring a few stray incidents,” Deputy Election Commissioner Alok Sinha told the media, after giving the extent of voting across the country.
Thursday’s balloting marked the completion of voting in 349 of the 543 elected seats in the Lok Sabha. The remaining seats will see balloting on three days, the elaborate exercise ending on May 12, four days before the results are declared.
There was low to massive polling on Thursday. While only a quarter of the 1.3 million voted in Anantnag, a militant hub in the Kashmir Valley and the only constituency to vote in Jammu and Kashmir, over 80 per cent of the 8.3 million turned up at polling booths in West Bengal.
In Assam, a policeman was killed when a mob stoned a group of security personnel in Kokrajhar constituency. In Rajasthan, villagers clashed with security forces in Dausa and torched a government vehicle. Some reporters were also attacked and their camera equipment destroyed.
The enthusiasm to vote was palpable everywhere — as it has been since the nationwide election began April 7.
Both in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharasthra, where polling took place in 19 constituencies, Muslims came out in large numbers to vote amid Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claims of a nationwide “Modi wave”.
Leading industrialists and Bollywood stars stood along with commoners in queues to vote.
All 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in adjoining Puducherry voted on Thursday. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa were among those who voted early in Tamil Nadu.
Both All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader Jayalalithaa and her West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress hope to garner most Lok Sabha seats in their states to play a major role in the event of a hung parliament.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew to Assam to vote, and claimed there was no “Modi wave” in the country.
“I have not seen any Modi wave sweeping the country. The Modi wave is only a creation of the media,” he said.
The maximum voting took place in West Bengal, where a staggering 70 per cent braved the soaring mercury to vote by 3pm. The Congress alleged bogus voting in the state.
Among the star contestants in the state are President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee (Jangipur).
The states, which saw polling on Thursday were Tamil Nadu (39 seats), Maharashtra (19), Uttar Pradesh (12), Madhya Pradesh (10), Chattisgarh and Bihar (seven each), West Bengal and Assam (six each), Rajasthan (five) and Jharkhand (four) and Jammu and Kashmir as well as Puducherry (one each).
With Thursday’s round of balloting — three more are to take place, and the results will be declared May 16 — the Lok Sabha election has ended in seven states.
