Voters feel the heat in third phase of polls

The heat wave singed the third phase of the Lok Sabha polls, with only half the 14.40 crore voters turning up to vote for 107 seats on Thursday. With temperatures ranging from 40 to 46 degree Celsius in nine states and two Union Territories, Deputy Election Commissioner R. Balakrishan said the “hot summer” had affected the turnout. Chetan Chauhan reports. See Special

Updated on: May 1, 2009, 24:45:32 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The heat wave singed the third phase of the Lok Sabha polls, with only half the 14.40 crore voters turning up to vote for 107 seats on Thursday.

Crucial phase for BJP

The round was crucial for the BJP which was defending 43 seats as compared to the Congress’s 25. Polling is now over in the BJP strongholds of Gujarat, MP and Karnataka.

With temperatures ranging from 40 to 46 degree Celsius in nine states and two Union Territories, Deputy Election Commissioner R. Balakrishan said the “hot summer” had affected the turnout.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and BJP prime minister candidate Lal Krishna Advani were among the 1,567 candidates in the fray in the third round.

Even as the poll panel described the polling as peaceful, two polling officials and their driver were killed in West Bengal’s Paschim Midnapore district when a landmine blew up their vehicle on Thursday evening.

In Purulia, two Border Security Force men were injured in an explosion in a primary school.

With Thursday’s poll, voting for two-thirds of the 543 Lok Sabha seats is now over.

The round was crucial for the BJP which was defending 43 seats as compared to the Congress’s 25. Polling is now over in the BJP strongholds of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

The average turnout for Phase III was lower compared to 2004, except in Gujarat and Anantnag, the only seat to go the polls in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday.

Despite the boycott call given by the separatists, the voting percentage was 10 per cent higher at 25 per cent in Anantnag than the last time.

Gujarat saw a five per cent higher voting this time. It was 45 per cent in 2004 polls. BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani is a candidate from Gandhinagar. After casting his vote, Advani called for a fixed tenure for Lok Sabha and compulsory voting to counter low turnout.

Polls were boycotted in 150 polling booths in West Bengal and Bihar. In West Bengal’s sensitive Lalgarh area, very low turnout was reported.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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