Patiala, October 15 - Today (till 4 pm) 59 percent voters exercised their right to vote for the election of 1022 Gram Panchayats of villages in 10 blocks of Patiala district. The polling process started at 8 am and continued after 4 pm. Barring two incidents, polling was conducted peacefully, smoothly and transparently. More than 10,500 electoral staff were deployed and 1402 polling booths were set up to cast votes.
Meanwhile, there was great enthusiasm among the voters and people in the villages cast their votes by standing in queues from 8 am till the last time of voting. District Electoral Officer-cum-Deputy Commissioner of Patiala Dr Preeti Yadav and District Police Chief Dr Nanak Singh personally visited many polling booths and inspected the entire election process. Deputy Commissioner Dr Preeti Yadav and SSP Dr Nanak Singh thanked all the voters, election staff and security forces for conducting the election process in a smooth, fair and peaceful manner.
He said that the district civil administration and the police have conducted these panchayat elections in a completely independent and transparent manner. Dr. Nanak Singh said that these elections were conducted in a free and peaceful manner. The counting of these votes was also done at the respective polling stations after the polling process was over and the results will be announced tonight. Earlier, the election of 324 Sarpanches and 3733 Panches was completed without competition. While after the withdrawal of names, 1843 candidates for Sarpanch and 4971 candidates for Panch were in the field.
During the elections, while ADC Rural (Development) Anuprita Johal coordinated with all the SDMs and Returning Officers, SDM Patiala Manjit Kaur, SDM Nabha Dr Ismat Vijay Singh, Rajpura SDM Avikesh Gupta, Samana SDM Tarsem Chand, Dudhan Sadhan of SDM Kirwalveer Singh and SDM Ashok Kumar of Patar along with the DSPs of their sub-divisions visited the polling villages and interacted with the candidates and voters along with the election staff.

Village Khuda polling canceled - firing, one injured

According to the information received, the polling has been canceled after the disturbance in village Khuda-Udhampur of Sanur block. Confirming the disturbance here, SHO of Sanur police station Harminder Singh said that 10-15 persons attacked the booth with the intention of occupying it. Someone from one of the parties tried to run away with the ballot box but it was recovered. In the scuffle between the two parties, shots were fired, injuring one person (according to unconfirmed reports, three persons).

Stone pelting in village Karim Nagar-Chichhadwala, SHO injured:-
During the village panchayat elections of Vidhan Sabha Constituency MLA Kulwant Singh Bajigar, the situation turned tense when some villagers started raising slogans against the alleged bullying during the stage of the election process.
 Meanwhile, when the police wanted to move forward to control the crowd, the enraged crowd started pelting bricks and stones on the police, in response to which the police resorted to light lathi charge to disperse the crowd. During this clash with the police, police station chief Patdar sub-inspector Yaspal Sharma was seriously injured due to a head injury.
Meanwhile, DSP Patdars Inderpal Singh Chauhan reached the spot and took control of the situation. According to information, a large crowd was standing there when the entry gate of the polling station was closed at 4 pm after peaceful polling all day at village Karim Nagar aka Chichadwala bordering Haryana. When the policemen on duty asked the crowd to leave, the people in the crowd got agitated and started shouting slogans.
The situation turned tense and the police resorted to lathi charge to disperse the crowd. As soon as the incident came to light, a large number of police forces reached the village of Chichadwala and after controlling the situation, the work of completing the remaining election process started. Meanwhile, SP Special Branch Patiala Jasbir Singh reached the spot and took stock of the situation and appealed to the people to remain calm.