Chhattisgarh witnessed high voters’ turnout on Thursday in the third and final phase of polling for seven seats as about 66 per cent voters of 1.18 crore electorates exercised their franchise in a peaceful polling which sealed fate of 153 candidates.
Chief Electoral Officer Sunil Kujur has put the estimated polling figure ‘above 66 per cent’. He stated that the polling figure could see 4-5 per cent further rise once the final voting data were compiled. The illiteracy-hit tribal dominated Surguja recorded the highest figure with 70 per cent polling.
Women and youth voters were seen in long queues right from early hours in all the seven seats — Raipur, Durg, Bilaspur, Korba, Surguja, Raigarh and Janjgir-Champa.
Polling was peaceful in the State barring a few minor incidents of clashes between the BJP cadre and the Congress workers in Raigarh and Korba seats. Voting was delayed at nine polling booths across seven seats because of some techinal faults in the EVM machines.
The State witnessed brisk polling in urban as well as in vast rural areas in Bilaspur where former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s niece Karuna Shukla is contesting as the Congress candidate.
Bilaspur seat has been described as ‘grudge battle’ for the BJP which has put lakhanlal Sahu, a local heavyweight of the OBC community, to settle scores with Shukla, who had spent about 25 years in the saffron rank and had recently joined the Congress.
In Raipur, the former Union Minister Ramesh Bais is expecting to pull off the sixth consecutive victory rising on Modi-wave but there is a close contest in Korba, Janjgir-Champa, Surguja, Durg and Raigarh seats.
The BJP and the Congress both have claimed late on Thursday that they would make a clean sweep in all the 11 seats in State.