Amid shadow of guns, voters of 13 naxal infested constituencies of Jharkhand came out in large numbers to exercise their right to vote in the first phase of State Assembly elections. Although outlawed rebels of CPI (Maoist) tried to instill fear among voters by blowing up a small culvert in Gumla district and materialising an IED blast in Lohardaga, the voters across the constituencies remained unfazed with the incidents.
According to the Election Commission of India’s provisional figures, 64.72 per cent polling was registered in the first phase. The figure, officials said, is likely to be revised as polling continued in some of the booths at the time of compilation of their provisional data.
ECI statistics revealed that the highest polling percentage among the 13 constituencies that went to poll in the first phase was recorded in Lohardaga, where 71.47 per cent voters exercised their right to franchise. The lowest voting percentage was recorded in Chatra where 56.59 per cent voters came out to vote. However, in terms of total percentage the ECI data revealed that there was an increase of 1.15 per cent polling in the 13 constituencies as compared to the figures of 2014 Assembly elections.
Notably, highly naxal infested constituencies including Gumla, Bishunpur, Lohardaga, Latehar and Lohardaga registered high voting percentage in comparison with 2014 Assembly polls.
Chief Electoral Officer, Jharkhand, Vinay Kumar Chaubey said that despite the fact that all 13 constituencies fell in the most naxal affected districts the polling went off peacefully with very enthusiastic participation of voters including PwDs, senior citizens, youth and women. The CEO said that Divyang voters had a strong participation in the first phase of voting. He said that 84.22 per cent of divyang voters exercised their franchise. The total number of divyang voters in this phase was 49,007. For their convenience, 2,669 volunteers were deployed at various polling stations to arrange and assist 3152 wheel chairs. Apart from this, 1,108 vehicles were used to bring and carry the disabled voters from the house to the polling station.
The CEO said that concrete arrangements were made to conduct the first phase of elections in a fair, peaceful and transparent manner. This phase was being monitored continuously and intensively throughout the entire electoral process. Due to being mostly Naxalite affected areas in this phase, elaborate security arrangements were made. Additional Chief Electoral Officer Kripanand Jha and Shailesh Kumar Chaurasia were also present on the occasion.
In the first phase, polling workers were sent two days before polling day to reach 1269 polling stations. This 1269 polling stations was located in 1226 polling station buildings. At the same time, 448 polling personnel were transported through helidropping at 203 polling stations located in inaccessible areas in 6 districts. At the same time, five helicopters will be used to secure these polling personnel on the second day after polling.