By Our Correspondent
PADMAPUR/PAIKALMAL/BHUBANESWAR: Chief Electoral Officer Sushil Kumar Lohani on Monday said an estimated 8.50% polling was recorded in the bye-election to the Padampur assembly seat till 9 am. In the by-poll, a total of 2,57,474 voters including 1,29,497 male and 1,27,565 female voters are exercising their franchise to decide the political fate of 10 candidates in the fray.
Lohani said no untoward incident has been reported from any booth so far. Though there were some glitches in the EVMs at a few places including booth no-9, four ballot units, 3 control units, and 8 VVPATs have been replaced . Reportedly, a total of 12 Zonal Magistrates, 36 Sectoral Officers, 45 Mobile Police Parties, are patrolling the area and attending to all the complaints.
Polling going on smoothly at as many as 319 booths with 1276 Polling Officers manning it while 128 polling officers have been kept on standby. As many as 41 platoons of police forces and nine companies of Central forces have been deployed to deal with any kind of exigency.
The voting which had begun at 7 am and continue till 4 pm at 319 booths. Of them, 15 are model booths and six are pink booths. Besides these, as many as 78 have been identified as sensitive booths and around 74 booths fall in the Maoist-hit areas.
As per senior officials, live webcasting arrangements have also been made in 50 percent of the booths.
BJD fielded Barsha Singh Bariha , daughter of late MLA Bijay Bariha while BJP’s former MLA Pradeep Purohit and Congress’ former MLA Satya Bhusan Sahu are in fray.
