State Bureau, Ranchi: Election campaigning has ended for the first phase of voting on 43 seats in the assembly elections. All parties and candidates put their full effort into their campaign strategies until the deadline, and afterward, candidates began door-to-door campaigns, which will continue on Tuesday. Voting will take place on these seats on November 13, starting at 7 a.m.
In places where voting will end at 5 p.m., campaigning stopped at 5 p.m. on Monday, while in places where voting will close at 4 p.m., campaigning ended at 4 p.m. on Monday.
Meanwhile, election personnel have been dispatched to facilitate voting in the respective districts. In five districts — West Singhbhum, Latehar, Lohardaga, Gumla, and Garhwa — which have 225 remote polling stations, election personnel were airlifted to 194 of these centers on Monday. The remaining 31 booths will have personnel airlifted on Tuesday. The Election Commission has made extensive arrangements for the first phase of voting, including the deployment of security forces at each polling station. GPS-equipped vehicles will be used for patrolling and transporting Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), allowing the Commission, the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, and district headquarters to monitor their movement.
According to Chief Electoral Officer K. Ravi Kumar, all preparations for the elections are complete. Necessary arrangements have been made at polling centers, and all centers will be monitored through webcasting. Voting in the first phase will be held for 43 seats, including 17 general, 6 reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), and 20 for Scheduled Tribes (ST).
Out of the 15,344 polling stations in the first phase, voting at 950 booths will end at 4 p.m. The remaining booths will allow voting from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eleven constituencies, including Koderma, Barkatha, Barhi, Hazaribagh, Jamshedpur East, Jamshedpur West, Majhgaon, Ranchi, Hatia, Panki, and Bhawanathpur, will have voting until 5 p.m. The Election Commission has set the voting time to 4 p.m. in remote and difficult-to-access areas for security reasons.
First Phase Voting Facts:
- Decisions for a total of 683 candidates contesting on 43 assembly seats will be made in this phase.
- Among the 683 candidates, 609 are men, 73 are women, and 1 is a third-gender candidate.
- A total of 13,710,717 voters, including 6,873,455 men, 6,836,959 women, and 303 third-gender individuals, will cast their votes.
- Voting will be conducted at 15,344 booths, with 12,716 in rural areas and 2,628 in urban areas.
- In the first phase, 86 NRIs, 28,989 service voters, and 191,988 differently-abled voters will participate.
- There are 63,601 voters aged over 85 and 957 voters over 100 years of age who will also cast their votes.
- A total of 1,152 polling stations will be managed by female personnel, 23 by youth, and 24 by differently-abled staff.
- The first phase will also include 50 unique polling stations.
- Jamshedpur West has the highest number of candidates at 28, while Jagannathpur has the lowest with eight candidates.
