Over 16 lakh voters to decide fate of 11 mayoral candidates today

Varanasi: The stage is all set for over 16 lakh voters to seal the fate of 11 mayoral, 6,363 candidates in 100 wards in urban local bodies election for Varanasi Municipal Corporation on Thursday. The polling parties reached the polling centres and booths amidst tight security arrangements on the eve of the elections on Wednesday.
After taking stock of the arrangements at several polling centres, district magistrate S Rajalingam said that departure of polling parties had started since morning and all the parties for 1,325 booths of 368 centres for VMC as well as 10 booths of five polling centres of Gangapur Nagar Panchayat reached the booths on Wednesday.



Commissioner of police Ashok Mutha Jain said that deployment of force at each booth has been ensured. Apart from civil police, he said, PAC personnel have been deployed in adequate strength and extra deployment of forces at sensitive and highly sensitive booths has been done. Foot marches of forces in each and every locality of poll bound areas is being ensured, he added. In the district, 394 polling booths have been identified as sensitive and 211 in highly sensitive category while 68 are in highly sensitive plus category
According to deputy-district election officer for urban local bodies Ranvijay Singh, of total 16,11,490 voters, maximum 4.87 lakh voters are in trans-Varuna zone while 3.92 lakh are in Bhelupur, 3.49 lakh in Dashashwamedh, 2.69 lakh in Adampur zone while Kotwali zone have 1.11 lakh voters. These zones cover 100 wards of VMC.
A total of 11 candidates including Bhartiya Janata Party’s Ashok Tiwari, Congress’ Anil Srivastava, Samajwadi Party’s Om Prakash Singh, Bahujan Samaj Party’s Subhash Chandra Majhi, Aam Aadmi Party’s Sharda Tandon, Apna Dal (Kameravadi) candidate Harish Mishra and Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj Party’s Anand Tiwari and independent candidates Omprakash Chaurasia, Deepak Lal Asthana, Virendra Kumar Gupta and Ramji Chaurasia and National Samaj Party’s Shamsher Khan are contesting in the mayoral election of VMC.
With the filing of nomination process, political parties, especially BJP started facing challenges from rebellions following which it showed the door to 36 rebels. Dissent also surfaced in the SP ahead of the launch of its campaign. While the BJP held public meetings and grand shows with chief minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya, Brajesh Pathak and other leaders, SP also engaged its former ministers including Om Prakash Singh and Virendra Singh for poll management. Congress preferred door-to-door campaigns.