TIL Desk/National/Gandhinagar/ Visible enthusiasm among voters marked the first phase of Gujarat election on Saturday as large queues lined up outside 24,689 polling booths. The Election Commission said it received several complaints against malfunctioning EVMs and VVPATs, while the Model Code of Conduct was also violated at a few places.
In the first two hours of polling in 89 constituencies spread across 19 districts of Kutch, Saurashtra and the southern region of the state, an overall 10 per cent polling was registered, a poll official said. People showed unprecedented and overwhelming response in Rajkot and Amreli as sources said there was 16 per cent polling since 8 a.m.
A total of 977 candidates are in the fray from Kutch, Morbi, Jamnagar, Surendranagar, Devbhoomi Dwarka, Rajkot, Botad, Porbandar, Junagadh, Amreli, Gir Somnath, Bhavnagar, Bharuch, Narmada, Surat, Tapi, Navsari, Dang and Valsad districts. Of the 89 seats, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party holds 67 and the Congress 16. One seat each is held by the NCP and JD-U while independents hold the remaining two.
Polling, which began at 8 a.m., will end at 5 p.m.Of the 2,12,31,652 voters, 1,11,05,933 are males and 1,01,25,472 females while 247 are from the third gender.The second phase polling is on December 14 and counting, along with that of Himachal Pradesh, will be held on December 18.
