The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Poor turnout for Asifnagar bypoll

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Poor turnout for Asifnagar bypoll

By Our Staff Reporter

Policemen checking the ration card of a voter during polling at a booth in the Asifnagar constituency on Wednesday.

HYDERABAD, OCT. 13. Low polling marked the byelection held to the Asifnagar Assembly constituency on Wednesday. The poll percentage was put at 37 as against 45 per cent during the general election held in May.

At a few booths the poll percentage was even less. Barring minor skirmishes and arguments, polling was by and large incident free.

According to the MCH officials, in all 70,431 votes were polled in Asifnagar constituency, of which men accounted for 39,311 votes and women 31,120. Electoral photo identity cards were used to 30,725 voters.

Polling started on a dull note and continued to be so throughout. In several booths the number of votes cast did not cross 100 in the first hour. In booth 181 in Bazarghat just 54 votes were polled up to 9 a.m. In booth 70 situated at Father Rock Memorial School, A.C. Guards, 114 votes were cast in the first two hours. The same dull trend prevailed in the afternoon. At booth 161 in Habeebnagar 447 out of 922 votes were polled by 3.45 p.m.

Police presence blamed

There was heavy police security around the polling stations and this, the candidates felt, was the reason for the poor voter turnout. "In Ahmed Nagar and First Lancer it was like curfew and people were afraid to stir out,"said the Majlis MLA, Akbaruddin Owaisi.

An hour before the polling ended, the Majlis leaders -- Asaduddin Owaisi and his brother, Akbaruddin Owaisi -- went around Mallepally, Afzalsagar and Habeebnagar areas. The Congress candidate, D. Nagender, and the TDP candidate, Arvind Kumar Goud, also moved around the constituency.

Suicide bid

In one of the polling booths at Begum Bazar, one Sayanna, created a scene when he was not allowed to vote as his name was missing from the list. In a fit of anger, he doused kerosene on his body and threatened to commit suicide. But the police immediately intervened and pacified him. The man was reportedly in an inebriated state, it was said.

There were, however, not many complaints this time about names missing from the voters list. The police verified the identity cards closely and only then allowed people to enter the booths. At the P.G. Science College in Saifabad, a visually impaired person, Abdul Rafeeq, was not allowed to vote when he presented his bus pass as proof of identity. He was asked to get ration card.

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