65 per cent of nine lakh voters exercise franchise

Panaji, May 5 (UNI) About 62 to 65 per cent of the nine lakh electorate in Goa today exercised their right to franchise to decide the fate of 5650 candidates, contesting for 185 village panchayats on non-party basis in the incident-free elections, held amid tight security.

The election in Bhand ward of Santa Cruz panchayat was, however, stalled with the ballot paper containing only eight names of the contestants instead of ten.

The election to this ward, with an electorate of 770, was postponed to May 7, according to the state election commissioner P M Borker.

Significantly, 54 members belonging to different wards had already been elected unopposed, while the rest of 1,483 wards faced elections today in 851 polling stations.

The state Government had declared public holiday for the day throughout the state to facilitate polling from 0800 hours to 1700 hours. Counting of votes would be held for two days from tomorrow at all the 11 taluk headquarters.

As many as 77 booths had been declared as sensitive and ten as hyper-sensitive where special precautionary measures had been taken.

About 6420 polling personel had been deployed for the purpose while two police constables were posted at each polling booth to ensure peaceful elections.

The state election commission had appointed one observor for each taluk for overseeing polling and counting votes.

UNI