Great Turnout In Mp Assembly Polls

By Author: Srishti Janpratinidhi
Total Articles: 52
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Madhya Pradesh assembly elections witnessed a great turnout with 71% polling recorded in the state. MP's Sheopur and Hosangabad fair well over 83%. The highest polling, 83.19 per cent, was recorded in Hoshangabad district, which has 4 Assembly seats. Jabalpur, with 7 seats, saw the lowest turnout at 56.36 per cent. The overall turnout for women voters was impressive as well with 68.91 per cent women turning up to vote.

Morena, Bhind and Khargone witnessed minor violent incidents which saw 15 FIRs being filed and 67 incidents of violence being recorded in other places in the state.

Villagers boycotted polls in 26 booths in 13 districts, over what the officials say, in protest against lack of roads and basic infrastructural facilities. Nonetheless, Monday’s elections to the 230-member State Assembly were a great show in comparison to the 2008 elections.

The death of 2 persons marred the otherwise peaceful polls in Madhya Pradesh. In the district of Morena, a relative of the Congress candidate Adal Singh Kansana of Sumawali, Bhura Kansana ...
... died after being shot by the BSF when he allegedly tried to sabotage an electronic voting machine. Another death reported was that of Abdul Wahab Khan, a poll official, who died while on election duty in Ujjain district.

In the Kasrawad constituency, Manas Ram, a Congress worker and 4 others were injured as political activists from Congress and the BJP pelted stones at each other. Poll violence took a toll of 20 lives in the State. In another incident, an FIR was lodged against Women and Child Development Minister Ranjana Baghel for allegedly distributing money among voters in the Manawar constituency.

In Lahar, workers from Congress, BJP and BSP allegedly clashed on more than one occasion. In Sumawali, clashes were reported too between Congress and BSP.

The Election Commission official felt satisfied with the large show of strength by the voters in the state and pleased by the unending queues of voters outside the polling booths even after the scheduled hours of polling was over. Re-polling might be ordered in one booth in Rewa, where technical difficulties with an EVM stalled the election process, said an official.

Game Changing Scenario

Both the Congress and BJP have run high-voltage campaigns in the state to clinch a game-changing advantage in the upcoming general election. The state with 46.4 million voters has a towering 16 million voters in the range of 18-21, who will have the none of the above(NOTA) option for the first time.

The Congress which promised free laptops, tablets and two-wheelers to meritorious students, went a step forward to also pledge 35kg of free food grains every month to every family below the poverty line. The BJP, on the other hand, toeing the development and youth-centric line offered smart phones to those who secured admission in government colleges.

For the BJP, a slip in MP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls could prove a double blow to the Chief Minister Chouhan. The BJP has to deal with anti-incumbency as well as resentment among the party workers against some MLAs and ministers over corruption charges.

The ongoing state election is projected by BJP as Chouhan's cornerstone of development through his numerous welfare schemes and clean image in the run-up to the elections. The BJP is also hoping that the Congress-led UPA’s troubles at the Centre with corruption charges and inflation will help it clinch the deal.

Janpratinidhi.com has come up with a unique feature that enables a visitor to compare performance of up to three elected representatives on select parameters of their work. This information is about the elected representatives of parliamentary constituenciesonly. And the source of the information is the official website of Lok Sabha, the Lower House of the Parliament.