Polling for second and final phase of Gujarat assembly polls begins

Gandhinagar:

The voting for’ second and final phase of Gujarat assembly polls, which have become a ‘do-or-die’ affair for both ruling BJP and main opposition Congress and a battle of prestige for PM Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah as well as Congress President Rahul Gandhi began in 93 segments of 14 districts in North and Central Gujarat at 8 am today.

The nonagenarian mother of PM Narendra Modi, 97 year old Hiraba was among the early voters and she voted in Gandhinagar where she lives with the younger brother of PM. former CM Anandiben Patel voted in Ghatlodia, Alpesh Thakor voted in Endala of Ahmedabad, incumbent minister Pradipsinh Jadeja voted in Endala in Viramgam of Ahmedabad.

Long queues were visible at several booths including those in the largest city of the state, Ahmedabad. At some places polling has been delayed owing to technical glitches in EVMs.

PM Modi will cast his vote at Nishan Vidyalaya booth in Ranip area of Ahmedabad. Veteran BJP leader and MP L K Advani is also likely to cast his vote at Hindi Vidyalaya booth in Shahpur of Ahmedabad. Amit Shah will vote in Naranpura area which he represented till his election as Rajyasabha MP in August this year. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who was also in-charge of Gujarat election for the ruling party would cast vote at Chimanbhai Institute booth in Vejalpur area. Among other prominent voters DyCM cum BJP candidate Nitin Patel would cast vote in Mahesana while Congress state president Bharat Solanki and former president and party candidate Siddharth Patel would cast vote in Borsad and Dabhoi of central Gujarat respectively.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made for the elections. Around 2 lakh poll personnel and over one lakh security personnel including the central paramilitary forces have been deployed for the conduct of polls. Re-polling on 6 booths in Jamjodhpur (2 booths), Una (2 booths), Nizar (1 booth) and Umbergaon (1 booth) of first phase was also taking place with the second phase poll. It has been necessitated as the presiding officers had not removed mock-poll data before the commencement of the actual polls.

Chief Electoral Officer B B Swain has appealed the people to exercise their franchise in large numbers. He also said that voting will not conclude till the last voter in the queue at 5pm cast his/her vote.

Of the seats going to polls 52 were won by ruling BJP, 39 by Congress and one each by NCP and Independent in the last assembly polls of 2012.

The assembly polls are a matter of prestige for PM Modi and Shah for Gujarat being their home-turf while it is so for Rahul as it is the first major election after his becoming president of Congress.
. Like the first phase, the steering for campaign for the second phase for ruling BJP was in the hands of PM Narendra Modi who organized altogether 15 rallies while that for main opposition Congress was led by its leader Rahul Gandhi who also held over a dozen rallies in North and Central Gujarat. While BJP continued to maintain that development was its main and sole poll plank and Congress tried to attack it on various issues including the alleged failure of issues like demonetization and poor implementation of GST etc, yet the narrative changed from both sides. BJP alleged that Pakistan and terror elements were trying to interfere in Gujarat elections. The issue of Mani Shankar Aiyar calling PM Modi ‘Neech’ also became prominent. BJP also alleged Congress of communal consolidation of votes after its cast based equation making. Congress also took a retaliatory posture and hit back at many issues. Bitter questions and counter questions were thrown at each other. Though other leaders were also in to the campaign including ministers and former ministers yet the center stage was with Modi and Rahul. PAAS leader Hardik Patel was also organizing several rallies and road shows against BJP.
A controversy erupted yesterday on the poll eve regarding the telecast of Rahul Gandhi’s interview by few local channels. EC ordered to file FIR against them for violation of the model code of conduct.

For the second phase there are a total of 851 candidates in the fray with DY CM Nitin Patel (Mahesana) , Minister Bhupendra Chudasama (Dholka), Shankar Chaudhary (Vav), Pradeepsinh Jadeja (Vatva) (All BJP) and Alpesh Thakor (Radhanpur), Siddharth Patel (Dabhoi) (both Congress) and congress supported independent Jignesh Mewani (Vadgam) etc being the prominent faces.BJP has fielded 93 candidates, Congress 81, BSP 75, AAP 8, JDU 14, NCP 28 Shiv Sena 17 and 170 form non recognized parties apart from 350 independents.
Maximum 34 candidates were in Mahesana while minimum 2 in Jhalod (ST) constituency. By area, the smallest is Dariapur (6 Sq.Km.) and the largest one is Radhanpur (2,544 Sq.Km.). By size of the Electorate, the smallest is Limkheda with 1,87,245 electors and the largest being Ghatlodia with 3,52,316 electors. Of the constituency 86 were with an electorate base of over 2 lakh. More than 50% of the electorates were below 40 years of age of which a little over 15% were under 25. The total number of voters was 22296867 of whom 10748977 were females and 455 third gender. Total 24575 booths have been made for the polling.

Notably in the first phase in which 977 candidates including Vijay Rupani (Rajkot West), BJP state president Jeetu Vaghani (Bhavnagar West ), former Congress president Arjun Modhwadia (Porbandar) and senior leader Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) were in fray, 66.75% voting took place.

The name of 14 districts going to polls and number of assembly segments in them in corresponding bracket is as follows Ahmedabad (21), Banaskantha (9), Patan (4), Mahesana (7), Sabarkantha (4), Aravlalli (3), Gandhinagar (5), Anand (7), Kheda (7), Mahisagar (2), Panchmahal (5), Dahod (6), Vadodara (9) and Chota Udepur (3). Counting will be held on December 18.

Of the 89 seats that went to polls in the first phase BJP during the last assembly poll in 2012 had won 63 seats while Congress had go only 22. Two were won by Keshubhai Patel led GPP which later merged with BJP and NCP and JDU had won one each. Of the 19 districts of first phase polls in 11 districts of Saurashtra (Surendranagar, Rajkot, Morbi, Jamnagar, Devbhomi-Dwarka, Porbandar, Gir-Somnath, Junagadh, Amreli, Bhavnagar, Botad ) BJP had won 31 of the total 49 seats while Congress had got 15, NCP one and GPP 2. In the seven districts of South Gujarat (Narmada, Bharuch, Surat, Tapi, Navsari, Valsad, and Dangs ) of total 34 seats BJP had won a whopping 24, Congress six and JDU one. Of the six seats of Kutch BJP had won 5 and Congress the remaining one seat.

Over all of the 182 seats in the last assembly polls BJP had won 115, Congress 61, GPP and NCP 2 each, JDU and Independent One each.

Counting of votes would be done on December 18.

DeshGujarat