Regional (M.P & C.G)

Heat – IPL Push Voters Indoors in Bhopal

Bhopal: With the Sun god continuing to push the mercury menacingly close to a punishing 40 degrees centigrade, voters in the state capital preferred to stay indoors on Thursday, reports coming in from the other 12 Lok Sabha segments that went to the polls since early morning today, suggest that the situation, there, was no different.

Poll booths at the Cambridge School in the Eidgah Hills area and the TM Convent school bear a deserted look. Mohd. Shafique an auto driver from the Gol Ghar area says, the poll stations were abuzz at between 10-11 am this morning before party workers and voters were forced inside by the unrelenting rise in the mercury.

The odd security vehicle with armed commandos sporting black bandanas and downed shutters at several business establishments in purana Bhopal are, perhaps, the only signs of the great democratic exercise being witnessed by the city.

Many attribute the low polling trend in the high-intensity localities in the walled city to Congress candidate – Surendra Singh Thakur’s inability to reach out to this minority bastion, apart from the heat wave and the IPL fixture between the Chennai Super Kings and the Delhi Daredevils that started at around 1600 hrs local rime.

Poll watchers suggest that average voting in the city would fail to reach the 44 per cent average in the state.

Meanwhile a landmine was detected in the vicinity of a poll station in Lanji sub district of the Balaghat constituency of the state, the mine was planted by suspected Maoist rebels under a banner that said: Government will be formed by bullets and not ballot.”

In the Rewa LS segment initial reports suggest that the primary contest may turn out to be between the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Devraj Singh Patel and erstwhile ruler and Samawadi Party candidate Pushpraj Singh, say correspondents, but add that the picture would become clearer as the day progresses.

In neighbouring Sidhi, the presence of Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh’s daughter Veena Singh’s presence in the contest as an independent may bomb the hopes of the Congress candidate Indrajeet Patel, say correspondents in the area.

With the final poll percentages yet to come in, initial reports suggest that the voting in the 13 LS segments in the state would be somewhere between 40-45 per cent, the low poll percentage is sure to spring surprises when the results are finally declared on May 16.

(Please check back for more poll related updates)

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