Uttarakhand: Bypoll to Almora’s Salt Assembly seat begins

New Delhi: Bypoll to the Salt Assembly seat in Almora district of Uttarakhand began on Saturday (April 17) at 7 am. 

People were seen queuing up outside polling booths to exercise their franchise amid elaborate security arrangements. "Elaborate security arrangements have been made to ensure peaceful polling in the constituency," Almora District Magistrate Nitin Singh Bhadauria was quoted by news agency PTI as saying. 

The polling began at 7 am and will continue till 5 pm today. The Salt Assembly seat is undergoing bypolls as it was vacated after the death of sitting BJP MLA Surendra Singh Jeena due to COVID-19 in November 2020. 

95,241 voters will cast their votes in the bypoll, out of which 48,682 are male and 46,559 female.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pitched late Surendra Singh Jeena’s elder brother Mahesh Jeena from the seat while Congress has fielded Ganga Pancholi.

Meanwhile, Uttarakhand recorded the sharpest single-day spike of 2,402 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, pushing the active cases tally to 12,484. The Uttarakhand government has banned the entry of outsiders into the state secretariat here in view of the surge in COVID-19 cases.

(With PTI inputs)

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