Polling for elections of 61 municipal councilors in Ahmedgarh, Amargarh and Malerkotla Municipal Councils passed off peacefully with a few incidents of minor scuffles and heated arguments at booths, which were already declared hypersensitive and sensitive.
However, no formal complaint was registered at any of the police stations looking after security arrangements at polling stations falling under respective jurisdiction.
Administration officials, led by Deputy Commissioner Viraj S Tidke and SSP Gurmit Singh, claimed that proactive arrangements had already been made for peaceful polling at 33 wards of Malerkotla, 17 wards of Ahmedgarh and 11 wards of Amargarh.
Amargarh recorded a maximum percentage of voting 80.33 at the close of polling and Ahmedgarh finished at 72.27 per cent. A total of 68.56 of enrolled voters exercised their right to vote for Municipal Council, Malerkotla, with overall percentage being 69.09 per cent.
SSP Gurmit Singh said special teams of police officials had been constituted with focus on prevention of crime of any kind during the elections.
Efforts were made to deploy adequate and well-equipped police personnel at and near 141 polling booths, established at 52 polling stations of the civic bodies.
The administration had 36 sensitive locations and 111 sensitive polling booths. 31 of these were identified as hypersensitive booths.
Residents believe that voting percentage could have been higher, had all votes of deceased been deleted and people of various categories staying in foreign countries could have been at their home address.
As candidates are more closely associated with their voters from their own locality they normally don’t afford their absence from the polling booth. Special arrangements are made to make arrangements for shifting of elderly, weak and sick voters to the polling booth.
