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TIRUNELVELI: Polling was brisk and peaceful during the Sankarankoil byelection on Sunday, with the voter turnout pegged at 77.50 per cent.Tirunelveli District Election Officer and Collector R Selvaraj said, “The by-election was conducted in a peaceful manner. A total of 77.50 percentage of votes were polled.” Tirunelveli Superintendent of Police Vijayendra S Bidari told Express that the by-election was peaceful and incident-free at all the 242 booths. “The EVMs will be stored in the strong room of the counting centre at Veerasamy Chettiar Engineering College at Puliyangudi amid heavy security,” the SP added.The polling percentage stood at 21 per cent up to 10 am, 43. 8 up to noon, 60. 2 up to 2 pm and 70. 1 up to 4 pm and kept increasing by 20 per cent every two hours. However, between 2 pm and 4 pm, the polling dropped by 10 per cent, but remained above 7 per cent in the last one hour. A total of 1,160 election officials, six companies of Central police personnel, including CISF and CRPF, 10 companies of TSP, 1,000 police personnel from other districts and 2,000 police personnel from Tir-unelveli district were involved in election duty. Election officials monitored polling at 240 booths via web camera. While polling began at 8 am, voters started trickling in much early. At the TDTA Middle School, Thevarkulam, enthusiastic voters turned up an hour before the polling.Serpentine queues were seen at the four polling booths at the Panchayat Union Primary School at Vannikonandel around 9 am. Women, men and the elderly were keen to exercise their franchise. The voters comprised mostly people from the middle and working classes.At the native village of former minister Karuppasamy, Kadarkarayal, an octogenarian, came all by herself to the booth and cast her vote braving the scorching sun. Though the mercury level was high, it did not deter voters from exercising their franchise.The by-election was necessitated following the death of the AIADMK MLA and Minister Karuppasamy. There were 13 candidates in the fray, including S Muthuselvi (AIADMK), Jawahar Suryakumar (DMK), Sathan Thirumalaikumar (MDMK), K Muthukumar (DMDK), Murugan (BJP), K S Nageshwara Rao (Samajwadi Party), Ganesan (AIJMK, Dr Isacc) and some independents.
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