Jaipur: Roughly 63% of more than 85 lakh eligible voters turned out in the first phase of Rajasthan's panchayati raj elections on Thursday, with high participation in most rural areas and isolated boycotts in pockets over reservation and ward delimitation.
Polling began at 7 am across 16 zila parishads and 104 panchayat samitis and ended at 6 pm. The Mangta panchayat samiti in Barmer recorded the highest turnout, about 79.55%, while the Rani Station panchayat samiti in Pali district recorded the lowest, about 40%, according to provisional figures.
In all, 6,926 candidates contested 2,081 seats: 1,693 candidates for 293 zila parishad wards and 5,233 for 1,788 panchayat samiti wards. There were 85,07,306 eligible voters, including 43,86,768 men, 41,20,511 women and 27 transgender voters, spread across 9,886 polling stations.
Technical glitches and malfunctions in electronic voting machines disrupted voting at several booths. In Jaipur's Kalwad, an EVM fault halted polling for about 45 minutes before a reserve machine was installed. In Baru village under Phalodi's Bap panchayat samiti, a machine failure at the start delayed voting by about three hours until a replacement arrived around 10 am. Machines were replaced at booths in Jhalawar's Bhawani Mandi and in Alwar's Govindgarh panchayat samiti.
In Khirja Mangal Singh gram panchayat in Jodhpur district's Balesar area, villagers boycotted polling over the reservation of the sarpanch post for the Other Backward Classes, pointing out that the panchayat had no OBC voters. In Pali's Sojat panchayat samiti, residents of Napawas village boycotted voting in Ward 3 over delimitation, as the village had been moved from Ward 1 to Ward 3. Similar protests were reported in some panchayat samitis in Jodhpur, though officials said residents were eventually persuaded to vote.
Deputy Chief Minister Premchand Bairwa voted at a booth in Srinivaspura village under Jaipur's Maujmabad panchayat samiti, and Medical and Health Minister Gajendra Singh Khinvsar voted in Nagaur's Khinvsar.
The elections are being held in phases for 41 zila parishads and 457 panchayat samitis, alongside polls for panches and sarpanches in 14,403 gram panchayats. The second phase of polling for zila parishad and panchayat samiti members is on October 28, the third on November 3, with panch and sarpanch polls on November 5 and indirect elections for up-sarpanches on November 6.