Guwahati: Voting for the first round of the Gujarat Assembly election began at around 8 am on Thursday under strict security measures.
Today, nearly 2 crore voters will decide the fate of the political parties in 89 constituencies spanning across 19 districts in Kutch, Saurashtra and South Gujarat.
The fate of the 788 candidates who are in the running for the first phase will be decided by the votes cast by a total of 2,39,76,670 voters by today at 5 p.m.
Out of the total number of electorates, 1,24,33,362 are males, 1,1,5,42,811 females and 497 are from the third gender. There are more than 4 lakh PWD voters who can cast ballots.
The voting age is 80 years or older for almost 9.8 lakh elderly citizens and 100 years or more for around 10,000 voters.
The EC reports that 4,945 voters are beyond the age of 99 and 5,745,460 voters are between the ages of 18 and 19. There are 125 men and 38 women among the 163 NRI voters.
There are 14,382 voting centres, out of which 3,311 are in the urban areas and 11,071 in the rural areas.
During the first round of voting, 13,065 polling places in 19 districts will be live streamed on the internet.The Chief Electoral Officer operates an election monitoring room at the state level in Gandhinagar. The EC has stated that there will be ongoing monitoring from 6.30 am until the conclusion of the voting process.
The entire structure has been put in place in accordance with the Election Commission’s directives. There will be 25,430 polling places used for voting in the first round. 13 065 of these voting locations will have live webcasts.
The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Gandhinagar has established a State Level Monitoring Room at Vidya Samiksha Kendra in Gandhinagar from where all of these 13,065 polling places would be carefully watched.
Before polls open at 8:00 am, up to 42 personnel or police in this monitoring room will continuously watch the webcast of voting places. From this state-level monitoring room, up to six top officials will watch webcasts of the voting process. From 6.30 am till the polls close there will be ongoing observation.
“In the first phase, a district-level monitoring room will also be made operational in all the districts where voting is to be held. Live webcasting of the polling stations of that district will be monitored in this district-level monitoring room,” the EC said.
As the BJP pursues a record-breaking seventh term in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah addressed rallies and roadshows in the state.
They included JP Nadda the leader of the BJP, as well as the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa and the union ministers Smriti Irani, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala, Ravishankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Nitin Gadkari.
Tejasvi Surya, president of the BJP Yuva Morcha, together with Manoj Tiwari and Ravi Kishan, organised rallies to support the party candidates.
Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister of Rajasthan, and Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the Congress, were two of the party’s well-known campaigners. Rahul Gandhi, the party’s leader, spoke at two rallies in the region.
Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi and AAP convenor, and Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister of Punjab, both engaged in substantial campaigning in the region and made a number of pledges.
Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel is contesting from Ghatlodia, while AAP candidate for chief minister Isudan Gadhvi from Khambhaliya, former Congressman Hardik Patel contesting for BJP in Viramgam and former Congressman Alpesh Thakor for BJP in Gandhinagar South.
The state president of the AAP Gopal Italia is running in the Katargam distric alongside Harsh Sanghavi, the state’s home minister for Gujarat, Rivaba Jadeja, Jamnagar North’s Rivaba Jadeja, Bhavnagar Rural’s Parshottam Solanki, Jasdan’s Kunwarji Bavaliya, Morbi’s Kantilal Amrutiya and Jetpur’s Jayes
A former BJP legislator Madhu Shrivastav is contesting as an independent from Vaghodia.
The counting of votes will be done on December 8. On the same day, the results of the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections will also be announced.