Mumbai, Nov 20: Voting, which started at 7 a.m. was underway in the 288 Assembly constituencies in Maharashtra and will end at 6 p.m. Of the 1,00,186 polling stations, 42,604 are urban and 57,582 are rural.

The MahaYuti comprising BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP is pitted against the Maha Vikas Aghadi consisting of Congress, Shiv Sena UBT and NC(SP) in a prestige battle. About 9.70 crore comprising 5.22 crore male and 4.69 crore female voters will exercise their right to vote. Pune district is leading in the highest number of voters.

There are 4,136 candidates comprising 3,771 men, 363 women and two others in the fray.

Some of the heavyweights in the electoral fray include Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, state BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule, state Congress chief Nana Patole, state NCP(SP) chief Jayant Patil, Shiv Sena(UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray, MNS nominee Amit Thackeray, former Union Minister Milind Deora and former Minister Amit Deshmukh.

State Deputy Chief Minister and NCP President Ajit Pawar has appealed to the voters to cast their votes without falling prey to pressure from anyone. ‘Exercise your voting right as per your conscience,’’ he said.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was among the first to cast his vote in Nagpur.

More than two lakh police and security personnel are deployed to ensure that the polling takes place in a peaceful and transparent environment. This includes the manpower of the Maharashtra Police Force, Home Guard Force, Civil Defense Force, Central Armed Police Force, State Armed Police Force, and State Reserve Police Force. All these security wings have been instructed to be alert.

The state's additional Chief Electoral Officer Dr Kiran Kulkarni said that an adequate number of EVMs are available in the state. There are 2,21,600 Ballot Units (221 per cent), 1,21,886 Control Units (122 per cent) and 1,32,094 VVPATs (132 per cent) available for 1,00,186 polling stations. Out of the total EVMs, 5166 Ballot Units, 5166 Control Units and 5165 VVPATs have been used for training and awareness programmes.

"Taking into consideration the apathy of the voters in the urban areas especially from Mumbai, Thane and Pune, the state election machinery conducted various campaigns to increase the voting percentage. A total of 1,181 polling stations have been set up in high-rise buildings/cooperative housing society complexes in the cities. Also, 210 polling stations have been set up in slum areas. The total number of sub-polling stations is 241," he added.

Dr Kulkarni said there are two types of sensitive polling stations comprising expenditure and security. "Incidentally, there is not a single vulnerable polling station in the state from the security point of view. In the case of expenditure polling stations, the state election machinery has given due attention," he added.

He said that nearly 8,500 complaints were registered on the C Vigil app of which except 10 to 12 others have already been addressed. "The state election machinery has done a great job in the seizure of cash, liquor, freebies and other things with Rs 673 crore. There has been a five-fold increase in seizures compared to the seizures done during the 2019 Assembly elections," he added.

According to Dr Kulkarni, during this code of conduct period, 532 FIRs have been filed. Of these, 210 cases are related to breach of model code of conduct and 63 are related to social media. While the remaining 259 cases are related to other matters.

--IANS

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