Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh):Voting commenced at 7 am on Tuesday for the third phase of Lok Sabha elections 2024 across nine parliamentary constituencies in the state, including Morena, Gwalior, Guna, Sagar, Vidisha, Bhopal, Rajgarh, Bhind, and Betul. There was noticeable enthusiasm among voters, who arrived early and queued up at polling stations to cast their votes.
CEO Anupam Rajan mentioned that most polling teams have set off, and basic facilities like water, medicines, and shelter are available at all polling booths.
Across the nine Lok Sabha seats, there are 127 candidates, with 118 men and nine women. Bhopal has the highest number of candidates at 22, while Bhind has the least at 7.
In all nine seats, there are a total of 177,52,583 voters. Among them, 92,68,987 are male, 84,83,105 are female, and there are 491 third-gender voters.
Furthermore, there are 88,106 voters above the age of 85, and 1,804 voters aged over 100 years. Additionally, there are 36,778 service voters.
The number of voters in the age group of 18 to 19 years is 525,179. For the third phase of polling, 20,456 polling centers have been set up. Among these, 2,043 are pink booths, where the entire polling process will be managed by women officials.
Moreover, there are 5,744 critical polling centers, and about 80 percent of the voting centers will have webcasting monitoring. Special security arrangements have been made for elections in the Gwalior and Chambal belt.
Additionally, extra staff has been deployed in areas with the highest number of voters to ensure faster polling and prevent long waiting times for voters. A total of 25,108 Balloting Units (BU), 20,456 Control Units (CU), and 20,456 Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines are being utilised across the nine constituencies in the third phase of Lok Sabha polls.
