Repolling at 73 booths in the Kairana Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh resulted in an estimated voter turnout of 61% on Wednesday, the state election commission said. The voting process was largely peaceful.
Forty-nine booths in Maharashtra’s Bhandara-Gondiya parliamentary seat and one booth in Nagaland’s lone Lok Sabha seat also went to the polls.
The Election Commission announced the repolling on Tuesday in response to several complaints of faulty voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT machines during Monday’s bye-elections in these seats. Polling officers reportedly had to change 384 faulty VVPATs and three EVMs.
Police and central paramilitary force personnel were deployed at the polling stations.
Kairana, where bye-elections were held because of the death of Bharatiya Janata Party MP Hukum Singh, saw a 54.17% turnout on Monday. Hukum Singh’s daughter Mriganka Singh was the BJP’s candidate. The Samajwadi Party, the Congress and the Nishad Party supported Rashtriya Lok Dal candidate Tabassum Hasan.
In Maharashtra’s Bhandara-Gondiya, a bye-election was scheduled after sitting MP Nana Patole quit the Bharatiya Janata Party and joined the Congress in December. Opposition parties Congress and Nationalist Congress Party have formed an alliance to contest the bye-election.
Nagaland saw a voter turnout of more than 85% on Monday. Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio of the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party was the Lok Sabha member from the sole parliamentary constituency in the state, until he quit to contest the Assembly elections in February. This made a bye-election necessary in Nagaland.
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