The Hindu : Front Page : High turnout in Presidential poll

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Friday, Jul 20, 2007
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High turnout in Presidential poll

Anita Joshua

AIADMK throws up a surprise, participates in election at the eleventh hour

— Photos: V.V. Krishnan and R.V. Moorthy

Exercising their choice: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the former Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee at the Parliament House in New Delhi on Thursday after casting their votes in the Presidential election. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj arrives to cast her ballot.

NEW DELHI: About 88.5 per cent of parliamentarians and 91 per cent of the State legislators cast their votes in the 13th Presidential election on Thursday. Eight States registered 100 per cent polling. Elsewhere, the turn-out was generally high.

The eleventh-hour decision of the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to participate in the polling provided a surprise element in a contest which otherwise went along expected lines.

According to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi, some members of the Telugu Desam Party and the Samajwadi Party also voted.

All three parties — constituents of the United National Progressive Alliance — earlier decided to abstain. While the AIADMK went back on the decision early on Thursday, the TDP and SP legislators acted on their own without any party directive.

Confident of a “massive” victory for the United Progressive Alliance-Left candidate Pratibha Patil, the Minister, who is also her election agent, said the AIADMK decision had not upset the ruling combine’s calculations. However, he conceded, there were unexpected abstentions in the UPA-Left camp: A.F. Golam Osmani, Congress MP from Assam, and Asaduddin Owaisi of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimmen (AIMIM), who represents Hyderabad in the Lok Sabha. Five MLAs of the AIMIM in Andhra Pradesh are also reported to have abstained.

Briefing mediapersons after the close of polling, Lok Sabha Secretary-General P.D.T. Achary, who is the Returning Officer, said 682 of the 770 elected members of both Houses of Parliament cast their votes.

Of these, 636 voted in Parliament House and 46 voted elsewhere. Fifty-nine persons sought permission to vote in their State Assemblies or in an Assembly of a State where they were currently located.

Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Manipur, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Puducherry recorded 100 per cent polling. Of the 4,120 State legislators, who form the electoral college, 3,755 voted. Nine of them voted in Parliament House after seeking permission.

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