Mangaluru gears up for polling day

Team Udayavani, May 12, 2018, 11:51 AM IST

Mangaluru: The polling day is finally here after days of campaigning which only involved controversies and accusations.

Polling began at 7 am and voters of DK and Udupi district turned up in huge numbers and queued up to cast their vote.

By 9.30 am, Mangaluru South saw a voter turnout of 4 percent, Mangaluru North 11%, Mangaluru (Ullal) 14%, Bantwal 9%, Beltangady 16%, Moodbidri 10.76%, Puttur 13 percent and Sullia 16%.

By 9 am, Udupi district saw a total turnout of 9.24 percent, with Byndoor 6.43%, Kundapur 9.96%, Udupi taluk 8.65%, Kaup 10.41% and Karkala 11.15%.

The overall turnout in Karnataka at 9.15 am was 10.51 percent.

Congress’ Mangaluru South candidate J R Lobo cast his vote early in the morning at St Sebastian school, Bendore, while independent candidate Srikar Prabhu cast his vote at Ganapathi high school, Hampankatta.

BJP candidate Vedavyas Kamath and MP Nalin Kumar Kateel voted at Gandhinagar polling booth in Urwa.

In Udupi, Congress candidate and MLAs Pramod Madhwaraj and Vinaykumar Sorake voted at Shree Narayanan Guru English Medium School, Malpe and Udupi Girls College respectively. Madhwaraj arrived with his mother Manorama Madhwaraj. Rajya Sabha MP Oscar Fernandes voted at Vivekananda School, Ajjarkad. Kundapur Congress candidate Gopal Poojary voted in Kanyana. Kundapur BJP candidate Halady Srinivas voted at Halady, while Congress candidate Rakesh Malli voted at Ankadakatte.

In Ullal, MLA and Congress candidate U T Khader cast his vote at Boliyar government primary school, while BJP’s Santosh Rai Boliyar voted at Panela higher primary school.

Complaints of malfunctioning voting machines were reported at a few polling booths. In a pink booth at Udupi Christian School, several voters were made to vote while the EVM was being fixed. An incident of verbal clash was reported at Kukkikatte school too where police had to intervene. Polling resumed after the EVMs were replaced.

In Uppinangady, EVMs malfunctioned due to presence of moisture following overnight rains. Voters returned home after waiting for long for the EVM to be repaired. In Sullia a faulty EVM caused the polling to begin quite late and thereby made voters wait for quite some time.

58 candidates are fighting for seats in over eight assembly constituencies located within Dakshina Kannada district. 1858 polling booths have been set up in the district, with over 13,176 electoral staff and 5,700 police personnel on duty. The district has 17.12 lac voters of which 8.41 lac are male and 8.71 lac are female voters. The district has a hundred transgender voters.

Election staff and police personnel arrived at their respective polling booths with their electronic voting machines and other equipment from mustering centers on Friday afternoon. The district has 20 pink polling booths and five ethnic polling booths which have been decorated in a traditional manner. 7,569 electronic voting machines have been provided to 1,858 polling booths, which is much more than the 20 percent reserve required to be maintained. The EVMs comprise of ballot units, control units, and vvpat units.

Each constituency has an electoral officer. Every polling booth comprises of a presiding officer, four polling officers, a group 'D' employee and a police personnel. Micro observers have been posted in 221 polling booths that are identified as difficult centers. Web casting has been arranged in 97 polling booths.

District electoral officer, Sasikanth Senthil, has informed that prohibitory orders under section 14 have been issued and it would be in affect from 6 pm on May 10 to 6 pm on May 12 all over the district.

In Udupi, 34 candidates are in the fray for five constituencies. There are 9.93 lac voters of which 4.78 lakh are men and 5.75 lakh are women. The electorate will be able to cast their votes through 1,103 polling booths. 6,342 polling staff and 2,500 security personnel have been arranged to make sure everything runs smoothly. There are ten pink booths in the district and over 555 wheel chairs have been kept ready for differently abled persons. The government model higher primary school at Tekkatte is a designated polling booth for the differently abled. 3 booths have been treated as tribal booths.

Since gram panchyat bypoll had taken place in Kaup and Kundapur constituencies recently, indelible ink will be smeared to the left middle fingers of voters. Counting of votes is scheduled for May 15 and the result is expected by the same evening.

The Election Commission has prepared well to ensure that the Karnataka assembly election is conducted in a free and fair manner. Polling will take place between 7 am to 6 pm today, except in Jayanagar and Rajarajeshwari Nagar constituencies where the polling has been cancelled. Therefore, voters will decide who will represent them for 222 assembly constituencies in the state by Saturday evening.

Over 2,700 candidates including 221 each from Congress and BJP and 217 from JD(S) and BSP are in the race. The political future of chief minister, Siddaramaiah, BJP state president, B S Yeddyuyrappa, JD(S) state president, Kumaraswamy, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president, Dr G Parameshwar, and several other high profile political personalities will be decided today.

Kolar’s Mulbagal constituency has 39 candidates in the fray making it the constituency with the highest number of candidates. Challakere in Chitradurga district and Sedam in Kalaburagi district have four candidates each, which happens to be the lowest in any constituency. In 23 constituencies, more than 15 candidates are in the run for assembly seats, making it necessary to set up two electronic voting machines and VVPat units.

Over 5.06 crore voters including 2.56 crore men, 2.5 crore women and 5,000 transgenders are eligible to cast their votes in this election. 43,653 police personnel, 22,172 home guards, 2,000 civilian service corps and about 3,000 personnel drawn from other entities have been assigned election duty. 585 contingents of central armed forces are also involved. These squads will be involved with flying squadsand sector squads apart from sensitive polling booths where armed protection is being provided.

Polling will take place in over 58,000 polling booths including about 12,000 grouped as sensitive.

State director general of police, Neelamani N Raju, has assured the public that unique arrangements have been made by the police department to facilitate voters to cast their votes without any obstacles.

State chief electoral officer, Sanjiv Kumar, has asked the electorate to exercise their right without any pressure or apprehension and without falling to any lure.

Over 3.65 lac election staff and 1.4 lac officers along with security staff have already reached the polling booths assigned to them along with electronic voting machines and other equipment. A mock drill was held as per instructions early in the day in the presence of election agents.

For the first time, election commission has made special arrangements to facilitate women, senior citizens and specially abled voters to encourage them to exercise their right.

Special pink polling booths d have been set up where the number of women voters is considerable. Arrangements have also been made to provide basic facilities to voters including drinking water in polling booths.

Sale of liquor has been banned all over the state and prohibitory orders under section 144 have been issued.