The Chincholi byelection that had witnessed high-voltage campaigning for a month saw a record voter turnout of 71% on Sunday.
This is the highest turnout in all the 15 Assembly elections held in the constituency since 1957. The previous record of 68.68% was registered in 2018. Chincholi had seen high voter turnout in 1978 (67.55%), 1989 (67.06%), 2013 (66.93%), and 1994 (66.43%) as well. The lowest turnout — 32% — was recorded in the first election, held in 1957.
As polling began at 7 a.m., people came out of their homes and exercised their franchise enthusiastically, without being bothered by the rising temperature. The voter turnout, which was slow to grow in the early hours, picked up pace under the scorching sun. The constituency recorded 7.88% voting by 9 a.m., 23.12% by 11 a.m., 40.40% by 1 p.m., 53.66% by 3 p.m., and 65.14% by 5 p.m. When voting ended at 6 pm, the percentage had finally crossed 70.76% to set a new record.
The byelection was necessitated by the resignation of Umesh Jadhav from the Assembly. He quit the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party to contest the Lok Sabha election from Kalaburagi against Congress leader M. Mallikarjun Kharge. His son, Avinash Jadhav, contested the byelection on BJP ticket while Subhash Rathod, one who had quit the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, was the Congress candidate.
Many who had migrated from villages, particularly from Lambani hamlets, to Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and other cities searching for livelihood options, came back to vote.
Snags in the heat
Voting was briefly disrupted in 93 polling stations because of technical snags in the Electronic Voting Machines. The problems were attributed to the high temperature that the area is known for. Voting resumed after the technical staff immediately fixed the problems or replaced the machines. Deputy Commissioner and District Election Officer R. Venkatesh Kumar told The Hindu that 93 faulty VVPATs were replaced. “It was mainly because of the extreme heat conditions. Since we had faced that during the last Lok Sabha elections, we were better equipped this time. We had put 295 machines standby,” he said. He added that the polling was, by and large, peaceful, free and fair, barring a few minor verbal clashes.
