Gandhinagar: Polling in nearly 9,000 gram panchayats of 33 districts in Gujarat held today amid tight security and deployment of over around 2 lakh poll and police personnel ended by and large peacefully this evening with initial estimates of overall more than 75 % voting.

Addressing a press conference here soon after the expiry of polling time State Election Commissioner Varesh Sinha said that the polling was by and large peaceful. ‘Though the official figures about actual poll percentage from the remote areas would reach and compile by late last night yet looking at the huge voter turnout since morning it seems that it was a larger turnout than the last gram panchayat polls,’ he said adding that last time the voter turnout was 77%.

He said that so far no untoward incident has been reported. The process was taking more time as the polling was done through ballots.

He said that at 12 places polling was postponed owing to the death of candidates while at some places re-polling will he held tomorrow. ‘The counting of the election will be held simultaneously on December 29 at 252 places on 4544 tables in 1653 counting halls. A total of 17347 employees will be deployed for the counting,’ he said.

Earlier the voting began at 8 am today and ended at 5 pm. The local body poll, which is not on party basis ie the candidates don;t belong to any party, were conducted with ballot papers instead of EVM’s. Sporadic incidents of violence and protest were reported from some places. The polling in Detal village under Lakhani of Banaskantha district in North Gujarat was stopped owing to complaints of printing of wrong symbol in front of a sarpanch candidate. The poll there is postponed. A candidate for Sarpanch post in Javeshi village under Fatupura taluka of Dahod district allegedly opened fire during the polls injuring a youth. In Siludi village in Bharuch district polling was disrupted for around one hour owing to dispute between two groups over the queue of voters. In Dabhoi of Vadodara ruckus was created by the supporters of a candidate alleging that his opponent was distributing food-grain to lure the voters.

The polls though taking place after demonetization won’t be able to give any clear indication about villagers view on government;s move as the elections are not being held on party basis.

Around 1 lakh 40 thousand poll personnel and over 50 thousand police personnel were deployed for the election held on total 22,382 booths set up for the polling of which 9,575 were identified as sensitive or hypersensitive, Secretary of the State Election Commission Mahesh Joshi had earlier said.

Mr Joshi said that a total 10,279 gram panchayat were scheduled to go for elections. However, 1,325 of them were declared Samras by the Panchayats department where all the ward members and Sarpanches are declared elected uncontested under the Samras scheme. After this, the remaining over 8527 Panchayats went to polls today. Apart from this, in 483 villages Sarpanchs and 27,183 ward members have also been elected uncontested. Polling for the by-election of various wards and Sarpanches of 39 gram panchayats was also held today.

Total 53116 wards were scheduled to witness polling today to seal the fate of 1,20,936 contestants while for the total 8527 posts of Sarpanch, 26813 contestants are in the fray. In 66 villages, nobody has filed nomination for Sarpanch and in 3,057 wards of different gram panchayats, nobody chose to contest the election.

During the election, the total number of voters is around 1.65 crore of which 79.63 lakh are female. Ballot papers were used for the polls for which 22,382 polling booths were set up using 44,158 ballot boxes. For the first time the option of the NOTA was made available for the voters in gram panchayat polls in Gujarat.

DeshGujarat