In comparison, the polling percentage was 50.85% in 2010 assembly elections and 55% in last year’s Lok Sabha elections in which BJP emerged as the single largest party with 22 seats.
Advertisement
Giving out district-wide detail of poll percentage, Sinha said Samastipur recorded 60 per cent turnout which was 54.2 per cent in the last assembly elections.
A total of 583 candidates are in the fray for the first phase of elections.
The Election Commission (EC) had marked nine constituencies – Chakai, Jhajha, Jamui, Sikandra, Govindpur, Rajauli, Suryagarha, Jamalpur and Tarapur – as severely Maoist-affected.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah headed the BJP poll blitzkreig.
“The senior-most voter who exercised her franchise on Monday was 108-year-old Maharani Devi at Teghra Assembly constituency in Begusarai”, said chief electoral officer Ajay Nayak here on Monday.
Reports of a few people boycotting voting were received from nine polling booths in Bhagalpur, Banka and Lakhisarai districts, he said.
The “mahagathbandhan” or grand alliance consisting of the JD(U), RJD and Congress had on Sunday approached the Commission seeking a ban on live telecast of Modi’s poll rallies in Bihar on the grounds that it could influence voters of constituencies going to the polls on Monday.
Barring stray incidents, polling was largely peaceful. This additionally turns into more and more clear from the BJP’s not saying the identify of its chief ministerial candidate. The Bihar battle, which ends on November 5 and whose outcome will be known on November 8, is the biggest popularity test in the country after the Delhi election in February in which the AAP routed the BJP. On the political front in an apparent setback to the ruling JD(U), a minister Awadesh Kumar Kushwaha and RJD candidate Mudrika Yadav – were caught on camera purportedly accepting bribes hours before the first phase of polls. These are, in fact, the two most pressing bread-and-butter issues underlying this Bihar election, as much as the debate over caste combinations, reservation policy and other transitory and emotive issues, beef-eating and corruption.
Advertisement
On the other side, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led the NDA charge by addressing a string of rallies leading to the first phase in which the BJP has fielded 27 candidates – it won 13 seats in this segment in 2010 – followed by Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP with 13. Further, security forces also used drones for air surveillance for the first time in the state’s electoral history.
