About 60 per cent polling was reported in the elections of Municipal Corporation Chandigarh which went off peacefully on Friday. In the last MCC elections-2016, the voting percentage was 59.5 per cent. The ballots will be counted on December 27.
While the maximum voting 72.81 per cent was recorded in Ward No-16, lowest 42.66 per cent was in Ward No-23. In Lok Sabha elections-2019, the voting was 73.6 per cent.
Chandigarh SSP Kuldeep Singh Chahal who inspected various polling stations during polling in the city said, “Adequate police forces were deployed at each polling station and the polling went off peacefully in the city without any untoward incident.”
Polling was slow in the morning but as the morning chill wore off, voters turned up in large numbers to exercise their vote at their respective polling booths. Long queues were seen throughout the day outside a majority of the polling booths located in colonies and villages located in the suburbs of Chandigarh. Wing Commander (retd) Satish Bhatia, a former Olympian and a national badminton champion, along with his wife Madhu Bhatia were among the early voters.
Justifying his decision to vote despite his old age, RP Dua, 85, a retir3 Central government employee and a resident of Sector 27-D, said, “When it comes to electing a Councillor, the preference goes to the candidate who communicates the needs of the community, especially the elderly to the Municipal Council, despite his/her political affiliation.”
BJP MP Kirron Kher reached a polling booth in Sector-7 to cast her vote. Former city MPs Pawan Bansal (Congress) and Satya Pal Jain (BJP) too cast their votes, besides former Chandigarh BJP unit President Sanjay Tandon. Outgoing BJP Mayor, Ravi Kant Sharma and Chandigarh BJP unit President, Arun Sood voted in Sector-37. The state president of Aam Aadmi Party Prem Garg cast his vote in the polling station set up in Government Model Senior Secondary School Sector-20D. Along with his family members, AAP leader Pradeep Chhabra exercised his vote at polling station, Sector 22B. At some places, queues of people witnessed outside many polling stations well past voting closed officially at 5 pm as many voters dashed to booths to get their votes in before the deadline.
Those already at polling stations by 5 pm were allowed to cast their ballots.
As per the EC officials, the poll percentage was just 33.71 per cent till 1 p.m. Forty-four per cent voting was reported until 3 pm. A total of 633,475 voters, including 301,275 women, will decide the fate of 203 candidates.
This time the city is witnessing a three-cornered contest with entry of the AAP into the fray from all 35 wards. In the past the battle was between two archrivals - the Congress and BJP.
The ruling BJP made development and its achievements in the past six years as its main campaign agenda. The Congress, having lost three successive elections to the BJP, based its campaign on anti-incumbency, saying the saffron party failed miserably to retain the tag of the ‘City Beautiful’. The AAP campaign was largely focused on replicating its successful "Delhi Model" in the city.
