Ranchi: Voting on Friday came to a peaceful end for the bypolls on the Mandar seat of the Jharkhand Assembly with which the fate of 14 candidates who were in the race for the seat has been sealed in the EVMs. District Electoral Officer cum Ranchi DC Chhavi Ranjan said that elaborate arrangements were made by the Election Commission for free and fair voting as a result no untoward incident was reported during the polling.
There were a total of 3,49,218 eligible voters in the Mandar assembly constituency which included 1,76,526 male, 1,72,686 female and six third-gender voters. In this by-election of the estimated voting percentage was 60.05 percent till 4 pm which is likely to go further high when final data will be compiled.
For the bye-election, 35 model polling stations were set up by the commission in a total of 433 polling stations. Apart from this, 38 such polling stations were identified where the number of Pardanshi women was high, due to which a woman polling officer was deputed at these stations. Work was also done by the commission for spreading the awareness and cooperation of the voters. In the bye-election, 484 volunteers, 65 wheelchairs and 25 vehicles were arranged by the commission for the differently-abled voters.
In this bye-election, 3,035 differently-abled voters and 2,845 voters above 80 years of age exercised their franchise at the polling station and 747 through postal papers.
During the election process, the Election Commission kept a close watch on the compliance of the Model Code of Conduct. In the process, illegal liquor worth Rs 1,33,228 including Rs 10,000 and other material worth Rs 14,10,000 were confiscated.