Punjab News: Repolling Ordered At Several Places After Minor Skirmishes

Chandigarh: State Election Commission (SEC) late Sunday evening ordered re-poll at several places after minor skirmishes were reported during the rural polls in Punjab on Sunday.

An official statement said that the elections to elect the members from 347 zones of 22 Zila Parishads and from 2,838 zones of 153 Panchayat Samitis were conducted peacefully in the state with no reports of any major clash from anywhere in the state.

However, the SEC ordered re-poll at the nine booths in different areas in district Amritsar, one in Barnala, four in Muktsar and one each in Gurdaspur and Jalandhar districts after reports of minor skirmishes there.

The re-poll will be held on December 16 and the counting of these will be taken up along with general counting on December 17.

Meanwhile, the turnout of 48% was said to be the lowest for rural polls in the post terrorism years. In the last rural polls – held in 2018 0 the turnout was 58.1%.

CONG MOVES HC

Meanwhile, the state Congress chief and Lok Sabha MP Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Monday moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking compulsory videography of the vote counting process of the rural polls.

In the public interest litigation (PIL), Warring, through counsel Nikhil Ghai, submitted that the PIL was filed ``in the interest of safeguarding the purity, transparency and credibility of the electoral process in elections of Zila Parishad in the state.