Elections for the 25-member Bar Council of Odisha were held peacefully across the State on Saturday except in a few western Odisha stations where the polls were put off due to picketing by lawyers in front of the booths. A total of 94 candidates were in the fray for the elections, which are held in every five years.
According to reports, elections were put off in Kantabanji, Patnagarh, Birmaharajpur, Balangir, Bhawanipatna, Jharsuguda and some other stations in western Odisha. Bar Council sources here indicated that the reelections in these stations would be held in the first week of December, following which counting of votes would be taken up at a later date.
Generally, the process of counting of votes in the Bar Council elections take four to five weeks for the complicated process involved in it as voting in these elections is held through proportional representation by single transferable vote. Experts from the State Assembly, who are well versed with this type of counting of votes, would be requisitioned for the purpose, the sources said.
Any lawyer, who is a member of the Bar Council, the statutory and autonomous body, is a voter for the elections. There are nearly 46,000 voters in the list. A total of 164 booths were set up in 95 stations across the State.
The maximum number of voters (12,000) is in Cuttack city, for whom 17 booths were set up here. Judicial officers selected by the Odisha High Court conducted the polling in each polling station in the State.
After the elections of all the 25 members, the Bar Council will select its chairman and vice-chairman. The council will also select a member to represent the Bar Council of India. Eminent lawyers who were in the fray for the Saturday’s elections were Gopal Krushna Mohanty, Asim Amitav Mohanty and Tahali Mohanty.