Chhattisgarh's 173 Urban Bodies Go To Polls Amid Tight Security
Over 10,000 candidates are contesting the polls in which the main fight is between the ruling BJP and Congress.
Elections to 173 urban bodies in Chhattisgarh, including the prominent Raipur, Durg and Bilaspur municipal corporations, began amid tight security on Tuesday.
Voting began at 8 am for the election to 10 municipal corporations, 49 municipal councils and 114 Nagar Panchayats, with a 35 per cent turnout recorded till noon, a state election official said.
He said the polling will conclude at 5 pm.
The official said polling for the by-election to five wards in the Sukma and Durg civic bodies was also underway.
He said no untoward incidents were reported from any polling station, and voting was underway peacefully.
Over 10,000 candidates are contesting the polls in which the main fight is between the ruling BJP and Congress. However, a large number of independent and rebel candidates in the fray are posing a huge challenge to candidates from the national parties.
Their fate will be decided by 44,90,360 voters, comprising 22,08,625 men, 22,81,226 women and 509 persons from the third gender.
As per official data, 5,970 polling stations have been set up, of which 1,531 have been categorised as sensitive and 132 as hyper-sensitive.
The official said 20 polling booths were set up for the by-polls.
He said there are reports of disruption in voting from a few polling booths due to technical snag in EVMs.
The Raipur Municipal Corporation will see a contest between the BJP's Meenal Choubey and Congress's Dipti Dubey for the post of mayor. Dubey is the wife of former mayor Pramod Dubey.
In the Rajnandgaon Municipal Corporation, the BJP has fielded former MP Madhusudan Yadav against Congress's Nikhil Dwivedi for the post of mayor, and the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation will see a fight between the Congress's Dr Ajay Tirkey and Manjusha Bhagat of the BJP.
The counting of votes will take place on February 15.
(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)
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