Live updates for the Gujarat Assembly elections in 2022: According to the Election Commission, voting in the first round of the Gujarat Assembly elections completed at 5 pm on Thursday with a voter turnout of over 57%. According to the office of the state’s chief electoral officer, voting began at 8 am with 788 candidates vying for the 89 seats up for grabs in 19 districts and will last until 5 pm across 14,382 polling sites.
Isudan Gadhvi, the AAP’s candidate for chief minister (from Devbhumi’s Kambhalia seat), Gopal Italia, the state unit president of the party (from Katargam in Surat), Rivaba Jadeja, and BJP MLAs Harsh Sanghavi and Purnesh Modi, Lalit Kagathara, Lalit Vasoya, and Rutvik Makwana are among the prominent candidates running in the first round.
In the meantime, the Opposition Congress filed a protest with the Election Commission alleging that at least 50 polling places, the majority of which are in the Saurashtra region of the state, lack functional electronic voting machines (EVMs). “We have filed a written complaint over the non-operation of the EVMs, and it is taking a long time to replace them.
A list of the locations where the EVMs are malfunctioning has been provided by us. This issue has occurred in about 50 polling places, many of which are in Saurashtra, which includes Jamnagar and Rajkot. Alok Sharma, the national spokesperson for the Congress, said that these should be quickly fixed to allow for the most polling possible.
In response to party president Mallikarjun Kharge’s “Ravan” jab at him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked during a rally on Thursday in the Gujarati hamlet of Kalol in the Panchmahal district that there is a rivalry among Congress politicians to slander him the most.
The Prime Minister reportedly made reference to Madhusudan Mistry’s statement when he remarked that before Kharge, another Congress leader had indicated that the party will show Modi his “aukat” (seat).