Overcoming the cumulative fatigue from the series of elections they had participated in the recent past, voters of lohardaga Assembly constituency polled massive in the by-election held on Monday.
The District administration reported that the poll percentage has gone over 66 per cent which is a record for the constituency.
“As per our interim reports more than 66.29 per cent of polling has taken place in the constituency. We have not got any report of untoward incident during the polling. It has been a completely peaceful election,” said lohardaga DC Manjunath Bhajantri soon after the poll ended at 3 in the evening. The administration had set up 272 polling booths and 2,19,595 voters were enrolled for using their franchise.
The highest percentage of voting was noted at Kairo block with 73 per cent whereas minimum at Peshrar block with 37.61 per cent. Polling percentage in rural areas of lohardaga remained 72.52 per cent while in urban areas it was 60.25 per cent. Counting of votes would take place December 17.
Regardless of the peaceful election, nine candidates in the fray started clamoring about their win soon after the polls ended. “Internal reports coming to us suggest that I am going to win with a comfortable margin. There is no doubt about that this time around. I was free this time and concentrated personally on the pockets that had played spoilsport on previous occasions,” said Pradesh Congress Committee president and party candidate Sukhdeo Bhagat.
Bhagat is contesting the election fourth time on a trot from the constituency on the Congress ticket, winning just once in 2005. Though, he has lost all the elections thereafter with a thin margin of around 500 votes and thus sounding confident of arresting the series of defeats this time.
However, the strongest contender, at least on paper, seems to be from the NDA. “Niru Shanti Bhagat is sure to sail through. The party has been polled with substantial vote share comprising AJSU’s traditional voters along with the BJP and also from others. The feedback we are getting is that people have voted for stability of Government and steady growth of the State,” said Chandra Prakash Chaudhary, an AJSU party leader and Minister in the Raghubar Das Cabinet.
Niru Shanti is the wife of convicted former MlA of lohardaga Kamal Kishore Bhagat of AJSU party and has been fielded as a joint NDA candidate to keep the constituency intact with ruling side.
Another important contestant of the triangular contest is JVM’s Bandhu Tirkey who claimed too for his easy win. “I have worked tirelessly on previous occasions and people know me very closely. There is no difference for me between Mandar (his previous constituency) and lohardaga. I am sure of winning the election,” said Tirkey after the polling closed.
Tirkey had joined the Babulal Marandi-led party recently and is banking badly on the image of the first chief minister of the State to drive home the voters. Entire top brass of the JVM was pressed into action to secure the win which, if happens, would be a kind of vindication from the party that had lost six of its sitting MlAs to the BJP just after the Assembly elections one year ago.