After a night of heavy rains, Bengaluru woke up to a cool morning on Saturday. Several voters from across the City reached their polling booths early in the morning to cast their votes in the 2018 Assembly elections.
Voters will be exercising their franchise to elect their representatives for 26 Assembly segments in the city. The polls have been postponed in two Assembly constituencies in Bengaluru — Rajarajeshwarinagar and Jayanagar. Elections in Rajarajeshwarinagar was countermanded by the Election Commission of India (ECI) after over 9,000 voter identity cards were seized from a flat in Jalahalli, coming under the constituency. The polls were deferred in Jayanagar constituency following the death of incumbent MLA and BJP candidate B.N. Vijay Kumar.
Some glitches were reported in a few polling stations. There were reports that polling began late in some polling booths. That apart, there was a lot of confusion over location of booths in Byatarayanapura constituency. Narasappa (48), a voter from the constituency, was running from school to school in the area searching for booth no. 231, with his family of four in tow.
The Karnataka Chief Election Officer (CEO) website listed the venue of a booth at a school which was not located there eventually. Apart from this particular case, several others were also searching for their respective booths. Booths that were shifted from the venues listed on CEO Karnataka website caused the confusion.
By 8.30 a.m., there were serpentine queues outside many polling stations. Voters had to stand in the queues for more than 40 minutes to cast their votes. At a polling station in Hebbal constituency, where there were three polling booths, the police personnel were on their toes directing the voters to their respective booths, even as paramilitary personnel armed with guns kept a close watch.
But with Bengaluru’s bad reputation of having low voter turnout, it remains to be seen if it will be any different this time around.
