By IANS
Malegaon (Maharasthra) : A record 70 percent of the 253,410 voters exercised their franchise amid stray incidents of violence as the communally sensitive powerloom town of south Maharashtra went to polls Sunday to elect its civic body.
Barring minor incidents of group clashes reported from four wards in which six people were injured, the voting passed off peacefully. The injured were admitted in the local Wadia hospital.
Voters were seen queuing up at 246 polling booths in the town right from 7 a.m. to elect 71 members from amongst 357 in the fray, apparently to return home before it got unbearably hot.
The town police, complemented by contingents from the district headquarters of Nashik, took out a flag march Thursday and Friday and stood guard at all the polling booths to ensure peaceful election.
Though the poll machinery had identified 171 polling booths as sensitive, the returning officer said the administration treated the whole town as sensitive.
Being held eight months after three devastating bomb blasts claimed 38 lives in the precincts of Hamidia mosque here, the civic elections had quite a few unique features – the apparent communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims constituting 60 and 40 percent of the population respectively being one of them.
Bal Thackeray's Shiv Sena and its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), fielding six and four Muslim candidates out of their 21 and 11 respectively, was another surprising aspect.
The two parties, who jointly ruled the state from 1995 to 1999, were fighting the elections separately. So were the two ruling Democratic Front partners Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) who had fielded 72 and 44 candidates respectively.
All political parties swearing by communal harmony and pitching for development in a three-week long campaign was another heartening feature.
Son of the local Congress MLA Sheikh Rashid and incumbent mayor Asif Sheikh has been elected unopposed to the 72-member civic body and is nursing an ambition to run another term.
But former mayor and Janata Dal veteran Nihal Ahmed, who had put up his son Buland Iqbal and daughter Shan-e-Hind in the election – resting his wife Sajida Ahmed this time – is keen to see Iqbal in the top post.
Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party, banking heavily on Muslim votes, had put up 67 and 21 candidates respectively.
Anticipating a hung house, NCP is already preparing ground for cobbling up a secular front with the Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party in an effort to keep the Congress out of power.
Counting of votes will be on Monday and the results will be out the same day.