Polling in India amid tight security

Schools and colleges in the constituency will be closed on Saturday due to the poll.

Chennai - Polling for Tamil Nadu’s Radhakrishnan Nagar assembly constituency with Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa as one of the contestants began here at 8 a.m. on Saturday amid tight security arrangements, an official said.
Around 250,000 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise where the AIADMK general secretary’s main rival is C. Mahendran of the Communist Party of India (CPI).
There are also 26 other independents and candidates from small parties in the fray including social activist K.R. Ramaswamy, popularly known as “Traffic Ramaswamy”.
The polling will close at 5 p.m.
Schools and colleges in the constituency will be closed on Saturday due to the poll.
Opposition parties such as the DMK, the PMK, the DMDK, the Congress, the BJP and the MDMK have decided to stay away from Saturday’s contest.
However, the two Left parties—CPI and CPI-M—have fielded Mahendran as their joint candidate.
The votes will be counted on June 30.
The Election Commission said all arrangements had been made for a peaceful conduct of the election.
On Thursday, the poll panel ordered all political functionaries, party workers and others who have come from outside the constituency and who are not voters of Radhakrishnan Nagar to leave the area.
The Election Commission has introduced a E-Netra system (Election Novel Electronic Tracking and Rapid Action System) in the constituency to observe the model code of conduct, monitor the expenditure by candidates, and redress complaints through a single window.
The poll panel has also introduced Electors Assistance System (EASY). Under this, voters in Radhakrishnan Nagar can get all election details. This facility is available through email, SMS and E-Netra MobileApp.
All the 230 polling stations will be covered by micro observers.
The Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency fell vacant after AIADMK member P. Vetrival resigned to facilitate Jayalalithaa’s re-election to the assembly.
Jayalalithaa, who was elected from Srirangam in 2011, lost that seat and the chief minister’s post after a trial court in Bengaluru convicted her in the disproportionate assets case.
The Karnataka High Court upheld her appeal and acquitted her of all charges. Jayalalithaa was again sworn in as chief minister, but she has to get elected to the assembly within six months.
The Karnataka government has gone on appeal against the high court order in the Supreme Court.
Brisk polling in Kerala by-election
Thiruvananthapuram - Voters turned up in large numbers on Saturday to cast their ballot in the by-election for Kerala assembly constituency Aruvikara, an official said.
Voters queued up much before the start of polling at 7 am and after three hours of polling 21 percent of the electorate had exercised their franchise.
The by-poll was necessitated following the death of sitting member and assembly speaker G. Karthikeyan in March. He had represented the constituency for 24 years.
There are a total of 16 candidates in the fray, and there are a total of 184,210 voters—up from 164,884 in 2011, when Karthikeyan won with a margin of over 10,000 votes.
The ruling Congress has fielded Karthikeyan’s 31-year-old son K.A. Sabarinathan, while the Communist Party of India-Marxist has nominated 67-year-old former speaker and minister M. Vijayakumar and the Bharatiya Janata Party has pitted its regular warhorse, O. Rajagopal, 85, in the fray.
On Saturday, all three candidates expressed confidence of winning the poll.
Sabarinathan said his biggest advantage is that Aruvikara electorate has been an extended family for him, while Vijayakumar said Keralites all over the world were viewing this election and the electorate is waiting to give a fitting lesson to the Oommen Chandy government.
Rajagopal said for the past five decades, the people of Kerala had just two options, either the Congress-led front or a CPI-M led government. He said the BJP has now emerged as the third alternative and people will definitely vote for a change.
Saturday’s election will see the photo of candidates affixed on the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the first time in a bid to eliminate confusion among voters.
Peaceful polling in Tripura assembly by-election

---

 
Voters queued up at polling stations on Saturday for the by-elections to two assembly seats in Tripura as the balloting began on a peaceful note, an official said.
The official said a quarter of the electorate cast their ballot at the 115 polling stations in the first two hours.
The polling began at 8 am.
There has been no report of any untoward incident so far, the official added.
“Polling is under way at 115 polling stations in Pratapgarh and Surma assembly segments. Central paramilitary forces and Tripura State Rifles troopers have been deployed to hold the by-polls smoothly,” the official said.
According to the officials, 50,004 voters in Pratapgarh and 42,142 in Surma assembly constituencies are eligible to cast their votes to choose their representative from the nine candidates in the fray.
The Election Commission has appointed four observers, around a 100 micro-observers and several hundred polling personnel to hold the by-polls.
Counting of ballots for the assembly seats, both reserved for the Scheduled Caste, will be held on June 30.
The by-elections were necessitated after the death of ruling CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) stalwart and former minister Anil Sarkar (Pratapgarh) and former minister Sudhir Das (Surma).
Sarkar represented his constituency for eight times in a row since 1978, Das won the Surma seat on five consecutive occasions since 1993.
Besides CPI-M, the main opposition Congress 

• India