Jaipur: Voting for the first phase of Rajasthan’s Urban Local Body elections began at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday and will continue until 6:00 p.m., with stringent security arrangements in place across polling centres.
The first phase covers 162 Urban Local Bodies across 39 districts, including 131 municipalities, 27 municipal councils and four municipal corporations including Bharatpur, Alwar, Bikaner and Bhilwara.
More than 57.52 lakh voters are eligible to cast their ballots to determine the fate of 20,623 candidates.
Polling is being conducted at 7,067 booths across 6,930 polling premises, covering 5,393 wards.
The four municipal corporations together account for 279 wards in this phase.
Elections in 32 wards have already been decided unopposed. In the four municipal corporations, 73 wards are witnessing direct contests between the BJP and Congress, while 76 wards have triangular contests and 130 wards are seeing multi-cornered contests.
Early-morning queues were reported at several polling stations.
In Alwar, voters began arriving at polling booths to elect councillors for the city’s 65 wards. Jayaprakash Sharma cast the first vote at the Dak Bungalow polling station shortly after polling opened.
Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma appealed to citizens to participate enthusiastically in the electoral process and exercise their right to vote. He urged voters, particularly first-time young voters, to turn out in large numbers and encourage their families and acquaintances to participate.
The State Election Commission has established a control room at 0141-2227407 for complaints and reports concerning voting and other election-related issues.
The Commission has also advised voters to verify their names in the electoral roll and check their polling-station details through the ‘Search Voter’ facility on its official website before heading to the polling booth.
Political party workers distributed voter slips door-to-door on Tuesday, as the Election Commission did not arrange for distribution of voter slips. There was a lot of enthusiasm among the voters to participate in the polls.
(IANS)
