RANCHI: Basukinath Nagar Panchayat in Dumka district was the best municipality in terms of voters' turnout with 76.69% polling, while Ranchi Municipal Corporation registered the lowest turnout of 49.3%. Though the polling percentage in Ranchi increased from 34.13% of 2015 by around 15%, it could have been better if the sudden delimitation of wards had not deprived thousands of voters from exercising their franchise.Elections in the newly-constituted Kapali Municipal Council of Saraikela-Kharsawan district were cancelled by the state election commission after Jharkhand Mukti Morcha complained about discrepancies in the ballot stickers. Admitting that the goof up occurred due to erroneous printing of JMM 's party symbol on the EVMs, state election commissioner N N Pandey said that the commission will soon notify dates for re-polling in Kapali municipal council. "The kind of error in printing the symbol of a particular party on EVMs could have defeated the purpose of fair polling, so it was decided to conduct re-polling there," he said.JMM central general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said that instead of the party's symbol of bow and arrow, the EVMs in Kapali had the symbol of only an arrow. "The BJP-ruled government left no stone unturned to ensure that the opposition candidates face trouble," he alleged.While good polling percentage was reported from all 33 centres, the turnout in Ranchi were hit due to delimitation of wards in November 2017, details of which were allegedly not communicated to the electorate in a proper manner by the state election commission or district administration.Governor Droupadi Murmu could not cast her vote as her name was missing from the voters' list. Former chief minister Hemant Soren had to go hunting for his booth while family members of state election commissioner were allotted different polling booths. Thousands of voters in RMC area failed to find their polling booth and returned without casting vote. Admitting these goof ups, Pandey said electors in Ranchi Municipal Corporation had to face some difficulty because of the delimitation of wards which was done on the basis of the 2011 Census."During the previous ULB election, the state did not have consolidated figures of 2011 census and hence 2001 census data was used as the base line. It was corrected this time for homogenous distribution of voters as per Municipal Act and the number of wards got reduced to 53 from 55," he said. Pandey said there is no separate voters list for ULB. The state commission follows the list prepared by the ECI. "Final voters list of the ECI was published on January 10 and it was then divided into 53 wards," he said. All the 34 municipalities in the state collectively registered 65.15% polling which was 1.98% better than the turnout of 2015 urban local body elections.The best voter turnout was recorded in Chakulia Nagar Panchayat in East Singhbhum district with 75.14%, Barharwa Nagar Panchayat in Sahebganj with 74%, Domchach Nagar Panchayat in Koderma, Saraikela nagar panchayat in Saraikela and Bundu Nagar Panchayat in Ranchi district whereas Hazaribag municipal corporation with 55%, Dumka municipal council with 58% and Phusro Municipal council with 59% were at the bottom of the list.There were 12 arrests in Hazaribag on allegations of poll rigging whereas four people were arrested in Dhanbad on allegations of distributing money to the voters. Police recovered a bundle of Rs.100 currency notes from three of the four people and took them into custody for further query and investigation.

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