Ranchi, Nov 11 (IANS): Campaigning for 43 seats in the first phase of Jharkhand Assembly elections ended on Monday evening. Voting will be held on these seats on November 13, for which the process of sending polling parties started on Monday.
Of the seats in the first phase, six are reserved for SC and 20 for the ST. The number of general seats is 17. On these seats, voters will decide the fate of a total of 683 candidates on EVMs, including former CM Champai Soren and six cabinet ministers of the current Hemant Soren government of Jharkhand -- Dr Rameshwar Oraon, Ramdas Soren, Banna Gupta, Mithilesh Thakur, Deepak Birua and Baidyanath Ram.
The heavyweight candidates of the first phase include former Minister JD(U)'s Saryu Rai, former Assembly Speaker and former Minister BJP's C.P. Singh, Neera Yadav, Neelkanth Singh Munda, Ramchandra Chandravanshi, former Minister Congress' K.N. Tripathi, former Chief Minister Raghubar Das' daughter-in-law Purnima Das, former CM Champai Soren's son Babulal Soren, cabinet Minister Satyanand Bhokta's daughter-in-law Rashmi Prakash.
On the seats of this phase, 87 candidates are from national parties, 32 are from recognised political parties of Jharkhand, 42 are from recognised parties of other states and 188 candidates are from unrecognised registered parties.
Apart from this, there are 334 Independent candidates also in the fray. The fate of 73 women candidates and of a third-gender candidate is also to be decided in the first phase. Third-gender candidate Nagma Rani is contesting as an Independent from Hatia.
The seats of the first phase include Koderma, Barkatha, Barhi, Barkagaon, Hazaribagh, Simaria, Chatra, Baharagora, Ghatshila, Potka, Jugsalai, Jamshedpur East, Jamshedpur West, Ichagarh, Saraikela, Chaibasa, Majhgaon, Jaganathpur, Manoharpur, Chakradharpur, Kharsawan, Tamar, Torpa, Khunti, Ranchi, Hatia, Kanke, Mandar, Sisai, Gumla, Bishunpur, Simdega, Kolebira, Lohardaga, Manika, Latehar, Panki, Daltonganj, Bishrampur, Chhatarpur, Hussainabad, Garhwa and Bhawanathpur.
A total of 15,344 booths have been set up for voting where a total of 1,37,10,717 voters will decide the fate of 683 candidates contesting the elections. The total voters in the first phase include 68,73,455 men, 68,36,959 women and 303 third gender.
Chief Electoral Officer K. Ravi Kumar has said that as soon as the election campaign ends, all the people associated with political parties (who are not voters of that area) who have gone there for election work will have to leave from there. If such people are caught after the campaign period ends, action will be taken against them as per the rules.