Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

Uttarakhand Election 2022: 62.5% Voter Turnout Recorded; Polling Largely Peaceful

February 14, 2022
voting in Uttarakhand

The fate of 632 candidates for Uttarakhand assembly elections was sealed on Monday as the state voted in a single phase. Uttarakhand, which has seen 11 chief ministers in the last two decades, has voted out the incumbent government in every assembly election since the state’s formation in 2000. The Bharatiya Janata Party has the twin task of beating the anti-incumbency and the electoral trend. Neither the BJP nor the Congress has declared its chief ministerial candidate in the elections but Pushkar Singh Dhami and Harish Rawat have remained the face of the poll campaign.

The hill state recorded a voter turnout of 62.5 per cent during the one-phase polling for Uttarakhand Assembly, the state election commission informed at 8.50 pm.

The voting in Uttarakhand was peaceful, except for a minor scuffle between supporters of political parties in Haridwar and Nainital districts. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate SS Kaler on Monday accused Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and his wife of violating the model code by visiting polling booths wearing scarves with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) symbol and campaigning by moving in a cavalcade of over a dozen vehicles from one booth to another.

Two villages in Kedarnath constituency boycott polls

Unhappy over a road not being constructed, residents of Jaggi Bagwan and Chilaund villages in Uttarakhand’s Kedarnath assembly constituency stayed away from voting in the Assembly elections on Monday. Though the district administration is trying to persuade the voters in these villages to come out and exercise their franchise, they have refused to budge.

The 225 voters of Chilaund and 376 of Jaggi Bagwan had earlier announced their decision to boycott the polls complaining about non-construction of a road, a long-standing demand of the villagers. Additional District Magistrate and Chief Development Officer Rudraprayag reached the two villages on Monday to persuade them to vote but they have refused to reconsider their decision so far.