Peaceful Voting in Phase IV of the General Election to the Legislative Assembly of Jharkhand, 2019

ECI/PN/117/2019                                        

Dated: 16^th December, 2019

PRESS NOTE

Peaceful Voting in Phase IV of the General Election to the Legislative Assembly of Jharkhand, 2019

The Fourth Phase of election took place in 15 Assembly Constituencies (ACs) covered in 4 districts (Deoghar, Giridih, Bokaro and Dhanbad) on 16.12.2019. 

The poll today went off peacefully, without any incident, with very enthusiastic participation of voters including PWDs, senior citizens, youth etc. 

• • 4,203 out of 6,101 polling stations (more than 69 %) were categorized as critical; adequate security arrangements were made. 
• • 74 polling stations required dispatching polling teams two days in advance.
• • 2 choppers were deployed to drop 158 polling personnel.
• • This phase covered 47,85,009 voters, including 7,430 service voters and 64,318 PwD voters. 221 Candidates including 22 female and 1 third gender Candidates are in fray.
• • 4,039 Volunteers facilitated bringing PwD voters from their houses to the polling stations. 3,432 vehicles were deployed to facilitate their transport. 2,504 wheelchairs were provided at the Polling Stations.
• • For the first time Absentee Voter status was provided to PwD and 80+ Voters of 3 Assembly Constituencies and they were given the facility to vote through Postal Ballot at their doorstep. A total of 1216 PwD and 80+ voters exercised their franchise using this provision of Postal Ballot.
• • The Commission put in place an elaborate mechanism to curb the misuse of money power. Total value of seizures across the State till today is Rs 16.97 Crore.
• • In four Assembly Constituencies of Phase-IV (viz., 15-Deoghar (SC), 31-Gandey, 36-Bokaro and 41-Jharia ACs), the Booth App to facilitate voters to know about the number of voters in the queue was used successfully.

1. 1. Approx. voter turnout figures (at 5.00 PM) :  

At the time of release of the Press Note, the voting in some of the Polling Stations was still going on. The final Voting Turnout will be known after the verification and scrutiny of Presiding Officers’ Diaries and other documents. As of reports received till 5.00 pm, the approximate voter turnout figure for all the 15 ACs of 4^th phase today is 62.46 %. The final voter turnout in LAE 2014 for these 15 ACs was 64.66%. 

1. 2. EVMs & VVPATs : 

No complaint regarding EVM/VVPAT have been reported during the poll today. Across the 15 ACs today, as per figures received till now only 0.30 % BUs, 0.28 % CUs and 0.87 % VVPATs were replaced, which is one of the lowest replacement.