7th round of polling passes off peacefully in Bihar with 50.56% voters’ turn out
Barring stray incidents of scuffle at some booths, voting in eight Lok Sabha seats in Bihar—Patna Sahib, Patliputra, Nalanda, Arrah, Karakat, Buxar, Sasaram and Jehanabad—passed off peacefully on Saturday with an estimated 50.56% electorate exercising their franchise. Four booths of Nalanda, Patliputra and Jehanabad Lok Sabha seats had poll boycotted over local issues.
Although electorates’ turn out was around 0.68% lower this time vis-a-vis 2019 (51.24%), chief electoral officer, Bihar, HR Srinivasa said the final figure will would go up as voters’ data was still being complied.
Additional director general of police (ADG), headquarter, JS Gangwar said that a few incidents of clashes between supporters of different candidates were reported from Bhojpur, Kaimur and Jehanabad. “The team of police officials stepped in to control the situation and booked trouble mongers. We are keeping vigil in the area,” said Gangwar.
A total of 134 candidates, including 12 women, were in the fray, for which voting was conducted on 16,634 polling booths. There were a total of 1.62 crore eligible voters in the eight constituencies, of which 85.01 lakh were men, 77.07 lakh women and 415 were third gender. A total of 73,348 police personnel and 20,780 homeguards were deployed to ensure free and fair polling.
