Khadoor Sahib bypoll: 58 pc polling till 5 pm

Tribune News Service

Khadoor Sahib, February 13

Voting for the Khadoor Sahib assembly seat byelection started on Saturday morning amidst boycott of the election by the Congress and AAP, making it a one-sided contest for the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal.

Fifty-eight per cent votes were polled till 5 pm.

The polling picked up slowly as only 4 per cent votes were polled till 9am. The vote percentage reached 9 per cent by 10 am, and 17 per cent till 11 am.  However, it gathered some pace by noon and 24 per cent polling was registered till then.

The polling booths in the constituency wore a deserted look as a few people reached the place. No queues were seen at most of the booths.

Voting began at 8 am and will take place till 5 pm.

As many as 31 polling stations have been declared hypersensitive while 62 as sensitive and two critical.

There are 1,87,184 voters and it was for the first time that five cross genders have been included in the list of voters.

As many as 2,100 security men have been deployed at the polling stations, which include 1,500 policemen and six companies of para military forces.

Similarly, 850 employees will be on poll duty.

Besides, 150 micro-observers have been appointed at different polling stations.

The DC said the constituency has been divided in two zones and each would be supervised by a SDM and SP-ranked officer.

Tight security arrangements have been made to thwart any untoward incident.

Ravinder Singh Brahampura, son of Akali stalwart, Ranjit Singh Brahampura is contesting on SAD ticket. The six others are Puran Singh of BSP (Ambedkar) and Independents Sumel Singh Sidhu (AAP rebel), Bhupinder Singh Bittu (Congress rebel), Sukhdev Singh, Harjit Singh and Anantjit Singh Sandhu.

The seat fell vacant after sitting Congress legislator Ramanjit Singh Sikki resigned in October 2015 over recent incidents of sacrilege of Sikh holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, in Punjab and the state government failing to contain such incidents.

The candidate winning the Khadoor Sahib seat in the byelection will remain a legislator for only about one year as assembly elections to 117 seats in Punjab will be held in February 2017.

The main opposition Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have opted out of the byelection.