Additional Chief Secretary and Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra, Shrikanth Deshpande said polling started as per the schedule and no EVMs malfunction was reported so far.
Additional Chief Secretary and Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra, Shrikanth Deshpande said polling started as per the schedule and no EVMs malfunction was reported so far.
Mumbai’s Andheri (East) Assembly bypoll has recorded a voter turnout of 3.61% till 9 a.m. There are 2,71,502 electorates in the cosmopolitan Assembly segment. Polling will conclude at 6 p.m.
Speaking to Today News 24, Additional Chief Secretary and Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra, Shrikanth Deshpande, said polling started as per the schedule and no EVMs malfunction was reported so far. He appealed to voters of Andheri (East) to come in large numbers to exercise their franchise.
The polling started on a dull note with low voter participation in the early hours. It began at 7 a.m. in all the 256 polling stations, but voters appear to be apathetic to exercise their franchise.
Andheri (East) Assembly constituency byelection
There are 2,71,502 registered voters and the majority of them are lower middle class and middle-class
It has around one lakh Marathi voters, followed by 48,000 each of north Indian and Muslims
According to the local leaders, 35,000 electors are Gujaratis, Marwaris and Jains
There are more than 16,000 south Indian voters and an equal number of Christian voters
There are 256 polling booths in the Andheri (East) constituency and polling will be held till 6 p.m.
Counting of votes will be taken up on November 6
With the Bharatiya Janata Party not in fray, for Uddhav Thackeray’s candidate Rutuja Ramesh Latke, the election is a mere formality with six other candidates – four of them independent, having little significance.
The byelection was necessitated due to the sudden death of Ms. Latke’s husband and Shiv Sena legislator Ramesh Latke following a cardiac arrest in May.
State government declared a public holiday for the Andheri (East) Assembly constituency on November 3 to enable voters to cast their votes.
The holiday will be applicable to Central and State government offices, semi-government offices, public enterprises, banks, and others. It will also apply to voters who work outside the limits of the Assembly constituency.
The run-up to the byelection saw much political drama. Ms. Latke, an employee of the BMC, approached the Bombay High Court on October 12 as the civic authority was not accepting her resignation. The next day, the court directed the BMC to issue a letter of acceptance to Ms. Latke, paving the way for her to file the nomination papers. The Uddhav group also alleged she was being pressured to contest as the candidate of the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena.
