Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Voting was peaceful and smooth in the Bhopal Dakshin-Paschim constituency in the city on Friday. Senior Congress leader and former minister PC Sharma is seeking re-election from this constituency.
He is facing BJP’s Bhagwandas Sabnai and nine other candidates. Around 58.20% of the voters from the constituency had cast their ballots till 5.00 pm. In the 2018 elections, the poll percentage was 63.68%.
In the last election, PC Sharma had defeated BJP’s Uma Shankar Gupta with a margin of 6,587 votes. The Aadarsh polling booths at Char Imli, TRI Shyamala Hills etc in the constituency were decorated beautifully with white and pink balloons to welcome and attract the voters.
Facilities including drinking water and waiting rooms were also available for voters at the booths. Voter selfie points were also available, where people were clicking selfies with inked fingers.
Pink booths at MLB College, Government Kamla Nehru School, New Market etc were also decorated with pink balloons and all the staff, including security personnel, were women.
Voting, which was sluggish in the morning, picked pace by afternoon. Till 9 am, two hours after the voting commenced, just 5.4% voters had exercised their franchise. By 1 pm, the figure had grown to 29.4.
In some polling booths, voting continued till well beyond 6pm, as the voters who had entered the booth premises before the scheduled end of voting at 6pm, were allowed to cast their vote.
