Rajasthan Bypolls: Ajmer Records 65.33% Polling, Alwar Registers 62% Voter Turnout, Mandalgarh - 80%
The counting of votes is scheduled by the Election Commission on February 1.
Jaipur, Jan 29: Bye-elections in one assembly and two Lok Sabha seats were held in Rajasthan on Monday. The parliamentary constituencies which went into bypolls -- Ajmer and Alwar -- recorded a voter turnout of 65.33 and 62 per cent respectively. The Mandalgarh legislative seat registered an impressive 80 per cent polling.
Polls to the three seats were necessitated after the deaths of their incumbent representatives. All the three seats were held by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In Ajmer, the sitting MP Sanwar Lal Jat passed away on August 9 last year. From Alwar, the lawmaker Mahant Chand Nath died on September 9, after battling illness for months. From Mandalgarh assembly segment, MLA Kirti Kumari succumbed to swine flu on August 28.
Congress, the primary opposition party in the state, was the main electoral challenger to the BJP in this round of the polls. The party had fielded Vivek Dhakad in Mandalgarh, Raghu Sharma in Ajmer and Karan Singh Yadav in Alwar to take on BJP's Shakti Singh Hada, Ramswaroop Lamba and Jaswant Singh Yadav respectively.
A total of 30 lakh voters were eligible to participate in the bypolls today -- 18.27 lakh registered voters in Alwar, 18.42 lakh in Ajmer and 2.31 lakh in Mandalgarh.
The counting of votes is scheduled by the Election Commission on February 1. The results are considered to be a litmus test for the ruling Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government in the state, which goes to state-wide assembly polls later this year.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 29, 2018 11:22 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).