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Counting of votes peaceful in Chitradurga

By Our Staff Correspondent

CHITRADURGA, MARCH 1. The counting of votes for the gram panchayat elections in Chitradurga district went off peacefully in all six centres on Tuesday.

The results are expected to be out late in the evening.

The counting of ballots began in Chitradurga, Hosadurga, Holalkere, Hiriyur, Challakere, and Molakalmuru towns around 8 a.m.

According to sources, the counting process is complex.

"Since there are multi-seat constituencies and a roaster system that needs to be followed, there'll be a delay in announcing the results," a senior officer said.

Time-consuming process

"We have to follow a graph counting process. This reduces the pace of counting. If there are 800 valid votes in a multi-seat constituency consisting of 20 candidates, all 800 votes have to be counted 20 times," S. Gurumurthy, the Chitrdurga tahsildar, explained.

Around 75 per cent of the votes had been counted by 6.30 p.m. The final results were expected to be announced around 9 p.m.

Thousands of people crowded around the counting centres in the district. Speaking to The Hindu , the Deputy Commissioner, S.R. Umashankar, said that the entire election process including counting had passed off peacefully in the district.

"There were no untoward incidents even during counting. I would like to thank the people of the district for their cooperation," he said.

Representation

The counting of votes has taken a lot more time than was expected. A senior official said: "Proper representation has been given to all categories. If a reserved category candidate gets more votes than a candidate from the general category, then the former is declared the winner in the general seat and another contestant from the same category, who has got less votes than the winning candidate will be elected from the reserved category. This procedure will be followed for candidates from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, BCM-A and BCM-B. Proper representation will also be given to women candidates in each category."

Polling percentage

Seventy percent of around 8.38 lakh people from the rural areas in Chitradurga exercised their franchise to elect 3,171 representatives to 182 gram panchayats. There were 7,506 candidates in the fray, of which 2,832 were women.

The taluk wise details of voter turn out is: Chitradurga, 65 per cent; Challakere, 70; Molakalmuru, 83; Hiriyur, 70; Hosadurga, 70; and Holalkere, 70 per cent.

Repolling had been ordered in three villages in Chitradurga and Hiriyur taluks, which was held on February 27.

Residents of two villages in Hiriyur and Challakere taluks boycotted the polls. As many as 494 candidates were elected unopposed in the entire district.

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