Karnataka Gram Panchayat Election Voting 2020: The election for Karnataka Gram Panchayats has concluded with close to 81 per cent voter turnout. The elections were scheduled in two phases, December 22 and December 27. In the first phase, voter turnout was recorded at 80 per cent while it was 80.71 in the second and final phase on Sunday. The counting of votes will take place on December 30 (Wednesday). As per the state election commission, 2.94 lakh people were eligible to cast their vote in Gram Panchayat elections.
Karnataka local body election results: Panchayats and Taluks
In the first phase held on December 22, elections had taken place for 3019 gram panchayats in 117 taluks. In this phase, over 1,17 lakh candidates were in the fray for 48048 seats. In the second phase, 2,709 panchayats in 109 Taluks went to the polls on December 27. Here, 1,05,431 candidates tried their luck for 39,378 seats at 20,728 booths. In both the phases, elections happened in 5,728 villages in 226 Taluks for 72,616 seats in the state.
Karnataka panchayat elections 2020: Covid patients voted too
The state election commission had made special arrangements for virus infected people to vote in the gram panchayat election. The Covid infected people were allowed to vote in the last hours of the polling. The Commission had, however, made masks and social distancing mandatory for the people at the polling booths. Reports suggest that 122 Covid patients cast their votes on Sunday.
Karnataka Gram Panchayat polls: Security arrangements
The commission had deployed 80,000 policemen and security personnel for the safe conduct of elections on Sunday. Besides them, the commission had also roped in Anganwadi, ASHA workers and Health Department officials for the election duty. This time, the commission had reduced the voters in each booth 1,000 from 1,500 earlier.
Karnataka local body election results 2020: Who all are in fray
The gram panchayat elections don’t happen on party symbols. In panchayat polls, candidates contest elections independently but they are backed by parties to strengthen their hold on village level politics. The BJP, Congress and JD-S are the three dominant parties in Karnataka. Currently, the BJP has been in power in the state since July 2019.
In the last elections held in 2018, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party by winning 104 out of 224 seats. But the Congress, which came second with 80 seats, extended the support to the JDS, which had come third with 37 seats. Both the parties formed the government but that could not last and collapsed a year later.
