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Voting remains low at 44% in Pratapgrah Sadar bypoll

Allahabad: Pratapgarh Sadar seat witnessed a poor response from voters after over 44% votes were polled in the assembly bypoll on Monday. According to district officials, 3,36,987 voters exercised their franchise at the 212 polling station set up for the byelection.

The voting percentage was below 20% till 11am, but the figure picked up later in the afternoon.

By 1pm, the polling percentage had risen to 26.7%. At the polling booth set up at Medniganj primary school in Katra officials had to use torchlight to work because of the insufficient light.

Of the 3,36,987 voters who cast their votes on Monday’s bypoll, 1,55,579 were women and one belonging to the third gender. Poll officials had set up 212 voting centres and 368 booths for the bypoll.

The district administration had identified 108 polling booths as sensitive and 17 as critical for Monday’s polling. Apart from police, paramilitary forces were also deployed for extra security.

There are 11 candidates in the fray and the results would be announced on October 24.

The list of candidates included Bharatiya Janata Party and Apna Dal (S) joint candidate Rajkumar Pal along, Samajwadi Party’s Brijesh Verma, Congress’ Neeraj Tripathi and Bahujan Samaj Party’s Ranjeet Patel.

As part of the arrangements, the assembly constituency was divided into eight zones and 24 sectors for which 38 inspectors,198 sub-inspectors, 218 head constables, 800 constables and home guards were deployed.

After the polling ended, the electronic voting machines (EVM) were kept in a strong room Maholi Mandi under the guard of ITBP jawans.

SP (Pratapgrah) Abhishek Singh said, “The polling was conducted peacefully as we had made sufficient security arrangements for the day.”

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