Karnataka - Mangalore   

65 per cent turnout in Ullal byelections

Special Correspondent

Polling violence-free; many voters turned away for want of identity proof

MANGALORE: Ullal byelection registered 65 per cent when the polling ended at 5 p.m. on Saturday. The polling though went on without any major incident.

The voting started in time in almost all booths except in Harekala and Pavoor where the electronic voting machines (EVMs) developed a snag. But they were soon replaced with the spare ones, which were brought from Mangalore. The voting was brisk in the morning. By 9 a.m., about 25 per cent of the voters had turned up. It reached 35 per cent by 11 a.m. in all rural booths.

In Mangalore City Corporation limits and Ullal Town Municipality limits, voting was brisk throughout the day. The security personnel from the Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), and the police had been deployed throughout the constituency and the security was tight. At many places, politicians who tried to visit the booths for reasons other than voting, were kept at bay by the security personnel.

Confusion

But there was confusion on account of the identity of voters. Halimamma at Ombhattu Kere was denied voting by the officials as her identity card had a photo of a man. In booth number 88 near Lakshminarasimha temple in Ullal, Vasanth Nayak and his wife were not issued photo identity card despite applying for it on January 22. In Jeppu, Balakrishna, a scientist in the National Institute of Technology, could not vote because he had lost his identity card.

Similar problems were faced by voters at Thalapady, Someshwara, Devipura, Bengre, Kotekar, Manjanady, Harekala, Pavoor, Alekala,and Deralakatte.

According to Inspector-General of Police (Western Range) H.N. Sathyanarayana Rao, voting went off peacefully and was incident free. The district election officials said that since all the booths were situated in and around Mangalore city, the de-mustered EVMs had reached the city by 7 p.m. just two hours after the polling ended. All the EVMs were kept at the Karnataka Polytechnic at Kadri hills under CISF and KSRP security.

Counting will be held at the same venue on June 5 and according to the Deputy Commissioner and District Election Officer M. Maheshwara Rao, the counting would start at 8 a.m. and the results were expected by 11 a.m.

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