Bihar voters queue up, polling jumps by 9% since 2005

PATNA: In what’s being seen as an indicator of growing voter awareness in Bihar, the polling percentage went up to 55% from 46% in 2005 in 47 constituencies that went to polls on Thursday. With heavy security deployment, much like the 2005 elections, the voting was peaceful.

‘‘ It was an incident-free day,’’ said chief electoral officer Sudhir Kumar Rakesh, adding that calculations were still on and the voter percentage may actually go up.

‘‘ A record 82% of 8068 polling booths were covered by Central paramilitary forces,’’ said an election official. Of these, 108 were in Naxal-affected locations.

DGP Neelmani said only 161 people were arrested. A lone candidate, JD-U’s Neeraj Kumar Babloo, was booked for manhandling a presiding officer in his Chhatapur constituency in Supaul district. Nine booths reported poll boycott, and these were attributed to ‘‘ lack of development work’’ , said an official press release. SK Rakesh thanked all political parties and candidates for ensuring peaceful polling. He described the voter turnout as ‘‘ excellent’’ .
‘‘ It was due to the relaxed norms which allowed voters to vote even if there were minor errors in the electoral rolls or photo ID-cards ,’’ he said, and added, ‘‘ Allowing all the eligible members of a family to vote on the basis of the photo ID-card of one of them also helped voters vote in larger numbers.

Rakesh also thanked the security forces for ‘‘ unprecedented’’ measures, including aerial patrolling, to instil confidence among the voters. ‘‘ This, too, contributed to heavy turnout,’’ he said. Madhubani recorded 52% polling, Supaul 53%, Araria 53%, Kishanganj 57%, Katihar 57%, Madhepura 52% and Saharsa 57%. ‘‘ The only mishap was when the presiding officer of booth no 123 at Pranpur in Katihar district died of heart attack,’’ said Rakesh, and added that the polling process was not interrupted.

JD(U)’s Babloo allegedly manhandled the presiding officer at booth no 177. ‘‘ We have lodged a case against the JD(U) candidate who will be arrested soon,’’ the DGP said. Bablu is absconding. The polls were boycotted at booth no 113, 114 (Benipatti), 178 (Rajnagar), 173 and 174 (Alamnagar), 226 (Sonebersa ), 192 (Jokihat) and 104 (Bahadurganj).

State I-T chief to be shunted. The SC has allowed the Centre to temporarily shift out director of Income Tax (investigations ) in Patna, Ujjawal Kumar Chaudhary, who was at the helm of search and seizures in cases against Madhu Koda. A bench gave a green signal to the Centre’s plea to allow Chaudhary to be shifted out of the state till the Bihar assembly elections were over, as per the wishes of the Election Commission.