A heavy polling of 71.6 per cent was recorded in Maihar Assembly by-election on Saturday where the key contest was between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's Narayan Tripathi and the main Opposition Congress’ Manish Patel though 13 other candidates were also trying their fortunes. Counting would be held at Government Vyankat School in Satna on February 16.
The voters in the constituency broke all the previous records of polling, as this is for the first time such a high per cent of polling was recorded.
Polling commenced at 7 am morning and continued till 5 pm. Nearly 52.7 per cent of the male voters and 51.69 per cent of the female electorate had exercised their franchise.
Amidst presence of huge police force, the polling was peaceful and no untoward incident was reported. Voters initially boycotted polling at polling centre 35 - Kislikala. However, the district administration persuaded the electorate to participate and polling began at the centre.
A total of 291 centres were set up and 164 of them were marked sensitive. The biggest was Centre Number 125 in Maihar town with 1,325 listed voters and the smallest Pathradatas Centre Number 13 having 261 electors.
As many as 1,600 officials were on duty. Six companies of the Central armed police forces are deployed since Monday along with the State police. New Delhi appointed 164 micro-observers. The 2,27,803-strong electorate includes 1,08,232 women. The result is to be announced on Tuesday.
The Samajwadi Party fielded Ramniwas Urmaliya and the Bahujan Samaj Party reposed faith in Ramlakhan Patel. In 2013, Tripathi emerged victorious as the Congress nominee but subsequently entered the saffron ranks. The by-poll was necessitated by Tripathi's resignation from the Vidhan Sabha. Patel recently quit the BSP. Following the debacle in the Ratlam parliamentary by-election, Maihar has become nothing short of a prestige issue for the saffron party that left no stone unturned to ensure a victory.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan himself addressed numerous meetings in an endeavour to drum up support for Tripathi. In fact, the Chief Minister stayed in Maihar on the final three days of campaigning. Other BJP leaders also hit the campaign trail.
Buoyed up by the Ratlam win, the Congress is hoping for a repeat. The last day of campaigning witnessed a road show by parliamentarian and former Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and the party's State chief Arun Yadav, also an ex-Union Minister, established contact with the people. Congress general secretary and former Chief Minister Digvijay Singh also campaigned.