Sowing season hits turnout at Chabbewal

As voting for the bypolls to four Assembly seats was held on Wednesday, the Chabbewal (reserved) constituency witnessed the lowest turnout at 53 per cent.

The seat had seen 71.19 per cent voting in the 2022 Assembly elections. Almost all candidates attributed the low turnout to the sowing season of peas and potatoes, which are the main crops of the area in this season. “Farmers are clearly more worried about their next crop rather than voting,” said Congress candidate Ranjit Kumar, pointing towards farmers busy working in fields along the Jalandhar-Phagwara highway.

BJP candidate and former minister Sohan S Thandal said, “Low turnout is certainly due to the farming community being busy nowadays.”

Raising the issue of revision of voters’ list, he said, “No proper revision of the list has been done for the past nearly 10 years. Many youth have moved abroad... The bigger issue is that of block level officers not striking off the names of the people who have passed away.”

Apart from two skirmishes, the polling largely remained peaceful in the constituency.

At Barian Khurd village, AAP workers forcibly got removed the booth of the BJP. The BJP had booths in just about 130 villages. Chabbewal village, which has over 2,800 voters, did not have a booth of the saffron party.

Voting stopped for some time due to technical glitches in electronic voting machines at three booths in the constituency, but later it resumed after faults were rectified. —TNS