ULB polls: DK, Ullal, Puttur and Bantwal sees high voting

• Counting of votes on September 3^rd

Mangaluru: The Urban Loacl Bodies (ULB) polls have culminated and the results of 250 candidates, contesting for 89 seats of Puttur, Ullal and Bantwal put together, is now safe in electronic voting machines.

The polling was held on Friday and was peaceful throughout the district with many voters casting their franchise Puttur City Municipal Council (CMC), Ullal CMC and Bantwal Town Municipal Corporation (TMC) limits. The counting of votes will be held in the taluk offices of Puttur, Bantwal and Bharat High School at Ullal on September 3^rd.

Percentage of voting

Dakshina Kannada district recorded 68.50% polling. The percentage of voting in Puttur, Ullal and Bantwal at the end of the voting day was 68.69%, 65.36% and 72.36% respectively. Bantwal recorded the highest voting percentage while Ullal, the lowest.

The total number of voters in the three urban local bodies was 1,17,979 of which , 80,820 have cast their votes.

Puttur

41 booths were set up for polling. A total of 27,299 out of the 39,745 voters cast their votes. This includes 13,206 are men and 14,093 are women. There are 77 candidates contesting in the 31 wards of Puttur CMC.

Ullal

43 polling booths were setup with 172 staff on election duty. Among 44,132 voters, 28,845 people cast their vote including 13,678 men and 15,077 women. A total of 102 candidates were in the fray in the 31 wards of Ullal CMC.

Bantwal

There are 71 candidates in the fray for the 27 seats of Bantwal TMC.Thirty-two polling booths were set up and 24,676 people cast their votes against the total number of 34,102 voters, including 11,840 men and 12,836 women.

Faulty EVM

There was some confusion at Parladka Higher Primary School as the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) was found to be faulty during the trial voting. At the beginning of the dummy voting, six out of 10 votes were converted to None Of The Above (NOTA).

The election agent and husband of Congress candidate Pushpalatha filed an objection with the booth-level officer and demanded that the EVM be replaced. However, the fault was not found during the third round of trial voting. Hence, the same EVM was used for the polling process. The confusion caused a 15 minute delay in commencement of the polling.