Repoll or adjourned poll ordered in 25 polling stations, including 22 in the naxal-affected Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra passed off smoothly. Repoll was held in a booth in Kaithal district of Haryana also.
On Tuesday, election could not be held in some booths in Gadchiroli district due to naxalite violence.
On Thursday too, there were stray incidents of firing by naxalites, to which the security forces retaliated, in the Kotmi and Bamanpalli areas of Gadchiroli district. However, no one was hurt and the incidents did not affect the polling process.
Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said the turnout was more than that was witnessed on October 13 in the district. Adjourned poll was held in seven polling stations in Armori (ST), two in Gadchiroli (ST) and 13 in Aheri (ST) Assembly constituencies. While Armori recorded 72 per cent polling, it was 70 in Gadchiroli and 48.5 per cent in Aheri.
Repoll was held in one polling station each in Nagpur Central and Ichalkaranji (in Kolhapur district) in Maharashtra, and at Karora in the Pundri Assembly constituency in Kaithal district of Haryana.
In Nagpur Central, repoll was necessitated as the presiding officer failed to reset the electronic voting machine (EVM) after the mock poll, resulting in the votes polled not tallying with the number (of voters turned up) mentioned in the register. In Ichalkaranji and Pundri, the EVMs malfunctioned.
The Election Commission is likely to order repoll in 20 polling stations in various Assembly segments of Arunachal Pradesh where miscreants took away or damaged EVMs during Tuesday’s poll.
