Chandigarh:
Polling for elections to 13,080 gram panchayats in Punjab was peacefully held on Wednesday with more than 80 per cent electorates exercising their franchise.
The polling went off peacefully...no untoward incident was reported from any part of the state during the poll process...the polling was between 80 to 85 per cent, an official spokesman of state election commission told reporters after the polling.
The counting of votes is in process and the results will be out by night, he said.
The fate of as many as 27,759 candidates was sealed in ballot boxes for the sarpanch seats across the state while over one lakh candidates are in the fray for 81,412 panch seats, the spokesman said.
Around 1,900 sarpanches had already been declared elected unopposed while 21,251 panches have been declared as having won without contest.
In view of the sensitivity of the elections, civil and police administration had made foolproof security arguments to avoid any untoward incident.
As many as 13,172 polling stations and 18,254 polling booths were set up for 13,080 gram panchayats.
The number of hyper sensitive polling stations and sensitive polling stations were 1,634 and 4,174 respectively, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the state election commission has issued instructions to all the presiding officers to hand over the copy of the results to the candidates after the completion of voting.
