52 per cent voter turnout in Gandhinagar civic polls

Nearly 52 per cent voters exercised their franchise for the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) polls which were held today in a peaceful manner, officials said.
"52.25 voter turnout has been registered in the polling, held between 8 AM till 5 PM. Polling was held peacefully, as no untoward incident took place during the day. Counting of votes will be held on April 26," Gandhinagar District Collector Ravi Shankar said.
Polling was held for all the 32 seats across 8 wards of the civic body. Each ward comprises 4 seats.
"Ward number 3, having sizable number of VVIPs, registered 45.15 per cent turnout, which was the lowest among all the 8 wards," Shankar added.

There are around 1.5 lakh registered voters in the Gujarat's capital city.
According to the officials of Gujarat State Election Commission (SEC), 403 out of 464 registered e-voters exercised their franchise using online voting facility.

Elaborate security arrangements were made for the polls, as over 800 policemen were deployed, said SEC Secretary M V Joshi.
"Out of the total 202 polling booths in 8 wards, 53 were declared as sensitive booths. Our State Election Commissioner Varesh Sinha personally visited some of these sensitive booths. Thanks to elaborate security arrangements, the polling ended peacefully," Joshi added.
This was the second election held for the Gandhinagar civic body, which was declared as a municipal corporation in 2011. In the first election, around 60 per cent voter turnout was registered.

After the recent delimitation, number of wards have gone down from 10 to 8, while number of seats have reduced from 33 to 32.
In 2011, Congress had won the election with 18 seats out of 33, while 15 seats went to BJP.
According to senior Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil,
people will teach a lesson to BJP for applying undemocratic tactics to acquire power last time.
"Though people gave mandate to Congress in the last election, BJP snatched power using their undemocratic tactics. This time, people will give a fitting reply to the BJP for playing such politics to get power by hook or crook," he said.

Gujarat BJP General Secretary I K Jadeja also expressed confidence of winning the election.
"People of Gandhinagar have seen the kind of development which took place in the city after BJP came to power. I am confident that people will give full majority to BJP this time," he said.