Repolling was conducted by the Election Commission of India in one of the polling booths in Kerala’s Ernakulam Lok Sabha constituency on Tuesday. The repolling which was conducted in booth number 83 of Kalamassery assembly constituency, recorded a voter turnout of 80.7% .
Election was conducted in the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies of Kerala on April 23. But after finding fault with the number of votes registered on the voting machine in booth number 83 of Kalamassery assembly constituency, the Election Commission of India had decided to conduct polling once again in this booth. The polling booth was set up at the East Kadungalloor Service Co-operative Bank’s auditorium.
Out of the 912 total voters in the booth, 736 voters turned up for repolling, including 362 male voters and 374 female voters. Polling began at 9 am at the booth and ended by 6 pm on Tuesday.
After the polling on April 23, the ECI found that there were 43 additional votes recorded than the actual number of voters who turned out to vote at the polling station. It was later found that the difference in votes occured as the presiding officer had forgotten to clear the votes registered during mock polling.
The booth had a total of 912 voters. Though 716 people came to cast votes on April 23 in the booth, only 715 people actually voted as one of the persons fainted after before polling after registering names. But when the voting machine was checked it was found that 758 votes were registered. This difference made the Returning Officer of Ernakulam and the general observer of the constituency to request to the Election Commission that repolling has to be done.
The CPI (M) has fielded P Rajeev and the Congress has picked sitting Ernakulam MLA Hibi Eden in the constitunecy. Union Minister of State for Tourism Alphons Kannanthanam is the NDA candidate.
The Lok Sabha constituency comprises of 6 Assembly constituencies; Vypeen, Paravur, Tripunithura, Thrikkakara, Kalamassery, Kochi and Ernakulam.