Baramati turnout poor

The voters in nearly all the six assembly constituencies falling under the Baramati Lok Sabha seat showed limited interest in exercising their franchise resulting in a noticeably low turnout which stood some where around 50 per cent at the close. The whole process was peacefully conducted.

Polling in Baramati began at a very slow pace. The scene was especially bad in the predominantly remote rural centres like Dive and Pargaon where polling for the first two hours was recorded lessthan 6 per cent. While there was a slight improvement in the number of people casting their vote between 11 am and 1 pm, the polling process just failed to pick up in Purandar and Shirur talukas which recorded only 28 and 29 per cent polling as late as just two hours before the polling closed down at 5 in the evening.

However the scene was a little different in Aamrai – Baramati and Nimbut, the home towns of sitting MP Sharad Pawar and his rival Sena- BJP candidate Viraj Kakade respectively. In Nimbut, polling gained momentum after 9 am and over 50 per cent of voters had already caste their vote by 1 pm. In Aamrai-Baramati also more than half the voters had exercised their franchise by 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon.

The industrial and relatively urban township of Pimpri-Chinchwad, also reflected the similar trend as only half the voters polled for their selected candidate today.Surprisingly a large number of women electrorates stayed away from polling throughout the constituency. The majority of women casttheir votes between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.