BJP candidate in Pilibhit, Varun Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that officials at a polling station here had helped the BSP candidate.
Veteran Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Jyoti Basu injured his left leg after a fall in his bathroom in the wee hours Wednesday and could not vote in the Lok Sabha election, his personal aide said.
The 95-year-old leader was administered medicines at home by doctors, who termed the injury as minor, the aide said.
"Basu is now under medical supervision at home. But doctors said there's no cause for worry. He can't vote this time because of his ailing health. He is now resting," Basu's personal assistant Joykrishna Ghosh told IANS.
West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi called on Basu at his Salt Lake residence in the evening to enquire about his health.
"I saw him. He was in good spirits and discussed international and national politics," Gandhi told reporters after coming out of Indira Bhavan - Basu's residence.
Asked about Basu's health, the governor said: "He is frail. But he still has the same humour and wit in his conversation that he had earlier."
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee also met Basu at his residence this evening.
This is the first time in 63 years that Basu has not exercised his franchise.
In 1946, he contested his maiden election to the Bengal Provincial Assembly from the Railways Reserved constituency.
The veteran communist leader has a blood clot in the brain from a fall at his Salt Lake residence September last year. The doctors had advised surgery but Basu did not opt for it.
Born July 8 1914, in Kolkata to a wealthy family, Basu was the state's chief minister from 1977 to 2000, when he quit voluntarily on health grounds.
The Election Commission will probe into the malfunctioning of EVMs in 101 polling booths of a Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal Wednesday, prompting the poll in these booths to be deferred to Thursday.
"We'll order an investigation into the matter and also seek a clarification from the district administration as to how the EVMs were damaged by rain and found faulty on the polling day," West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Debashis Sen told reporters here.
"The person who was in-charge of those EVMs should have been more careful while dealing with the matter," he said.
Polling could not begin in 101 booths of the Mandirbazar assembly segment of Mathurapur Lok Sabha constituency in South 24 Parganas district as the EVMs, which were wet after Tuesday's rain, did not function.
Polling will be held in these booths Thursday between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., Sen said.
"On the basis of the probe, the Election Commission will finally file a report on the issue," he added.
Nearly 65 percent polling was recorded for nine parliamentary seats in Punjab and one seat in Chandigarh Wednesday as the fifth and final round of voting ended.
Punjab's Chief Electoral Officer Kusumjit Sidhu said the highest polling of 69 percent was recorded in the newly-created border constituency of Khadoor Sahib.
There were 11.6 million eligible voters in Punjab and 522,650 voters in the union territory of Chandigarh for Wednesday's polling.
Election officials in Chandigarh said that over 65 percent of the city's voters came out to vote. This was much higher than the polling percentage of 52 percent in the 2004 general elections.
Election officials said between 40 and 45 percent voting was recorded in Punjab by early afternoon.
Long queues could be seen in Punjab's rural areas and some of the urban polling centres.
In rural areas voters were seen queuing up even before voting began at 7 a.m. at 13,152 polling centres. Urban voters initially seemed less enthusiastic compared to their rural counterparts.
In Chandigarh, which recorded just 52 percent voting in the 2004 general elections, voter turnout seemed much better this time. In the first four hours, nearly 25 percent of the 522,650 electorate of the union territory had exercised their franchise.
The nine constituencies in Punjab that voted Wednesday were Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Khadoor Sahib, Jalandhar (reserved), Hoshiarpur (reserved), Faridkot (reserved), Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib (reserved) and Anandpur Sahib.
Wednesday's polling would decide the fate of 139 candidates in these nine seats. The highest number of candidates, 30, were fighting for the Ludhiana seat.
Prominent candidates in the fray included cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu (BJP-Amritsar), actor Vinod Khanna (BJP-Gurdaspur), Congress spokesman Manish Tewari (Ludhiana), singer Hans Raj Hans (Akali Dal-Jalandhar) and Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal (Akali Dal-Fatehgarh Sahib).
Sidhu prayed at the Golden Temple, the holiest of Sikh shrines, before casting his vote.
Punjab had recorded a high polling percentage of 73.5 percent in the May 7 poll, when balloting had taken place in the other four constituencies of the state. Less than 62 percent had cast their votes in the 2004 general elections.
In Chandigarh, Minister of State for Finance Pawan Kumar Bansal was among the early ones to cast his vote. He is aiming for a hat-trick of victories from the seat.
There were 14 contestants in the fray for the Chandigarh seat though Bansal's main contest is with Satya Pal Jain of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The ruling Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine had won 11 seats in the 2004 elections while the Congress got two.
Two mediapersons were injured after supporters of the ruling Akali Dal chased them on suspicion and beat them up. witnesses said the duo was also fired upon in a village in Moga district. The police later registered a case against 30-35 unidentified people.
But Moga district police chief Ashok Baath said no firing took place. He said the injured were rushed to hospital and the incident was being investigated.
The Punjab Police also booked two sitting Congress legislators, Joginder Pal Jain of Moga and Darshan Singh Brar of Baghapurana.
While Jain was booked for assault and criminal intimidation and also under the Scheduled Castes Act, Brar was booked for forcible entry into a polling station in violation of the Election Commission guidelines.
Minor clashes were reported at a few other places in Punjab but the polling by and large went off peacefully.
Even as the exit polls for the Lok Sabha elections trickled in Wednesday evening predicting a hung parliament, one has to keep in mind that they had all gone woefully wrong in the 2004 electoral battle predicting exactly the opposite of the outcome.
As many as five leading TV channels had then predicted in the previous elections that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would bag 230 to 278 seats and gave the Congress and its allies 171 to 205 seats.
The results, which led to the formation of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, shocked the pollsters, the winners and the losers alike.
The UPA walked away with 275 seats and the NDA finished at 185. The Congress became the single largest party with 145 seats while the BJP got 138 seats.
The exit polls 2009 appear more realistic with the pollsters predicting a close fight between the two main alliances with the Third Front partners, including the Left parties, likely to play kingmakers.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will end up marginally ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Lok Sabha elections, exit polls Wednesday night said.
According to a survey by India TV, the UPA would be the single largest coalition with 195-201 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha while the NDA was expected to win 189-195 seats.
It gave the Third Front 113-121 seats, giving its constituents a huge say in government formation.
The UPA tally could go up to 227-237 if the seats bagged by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Samajwadi Party, estranged alllies of the Congress, were also to be included, India TV said after surveying 530 parliamentary seats.
According to the Star News-Nielsen exit poll, the UPA was likely to bag 199 seats and the NDA 191 seats. The Congress itself was projected to win 155 seats and the BJP 153. The Third Front could settle with 104 seats.
Headlines Today television channel gave the Congress and its allies 191 seats against 180 to the BJP and its allies.
The Left parties, which provided support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government until July last year, were projected to get 38 seats, a huge fall from the earlier tally of 60-plus.
The remaini*ng seats were credited to smaller and regional parties including the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh, headed by Mayawati.
The Times of India projection gave the UPA 199 seats with the Congress bagging 154 seats. The NDA was poised to get 183 seats, and the BJP alone 142.
The Congress had defeated the BJP in the last general elections in 2004 and then cobbled the UPA with the support of the Left.
The exit polls were way off the mark in the 2004 elections. Nearly all of them predicted a NDA victory by a wide margin. But the BJP-led grouping lost to a rejuvenated Congress.
India was headed for a badly fractured Lok Sabha making government formation a tough task, television projections late Wednesday showed, as one of the country's most fiercely contested battles for power ended after voting by some 428 million people.
Three projections put the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) slightly ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), with the Congress tipped to finish as the single largest party in the 545-member Lok Sabha.
As the curtains came down on the staggered elections that began April 16, an India TV exit poll said the UPA could end up with 195-201 seats and the NDA with 189-195 seats. The UPA tally could go up to 227-237 if the seats bagged by its estranged allies were included.
The Star News-Nielsen exit poll also put the UPA marginally ahead with 199 seats, just ahead of the NDA's 191 seats. The Congress itself was expected to win 155 seats and the BJP 153, both more than what they bagged in 2004.
TimesNow television channel gave 198 seats to the UPA and 183 to the NDA, with the Communist strength in the Lok Sabha falling steeply from over 60 to 38. Smaller and regional groups are expected to win 124 seats and thus determine who gets the throne in New Delhi.
The India TV exit poll gave the wobbly Third Front -- an alliance of the Communists and regional parties -- 113-121 seats. The Star-Nielsen gave it 104 seats.
The projections -- mirroring the pre-election mood across the country -- triggered a furious debate among pundits about who would get to rule India by cobbling a coalition of disparate groups.
The expected cliffhanger verdict has already forced the Congress and also the BJP -- the two main contenders for power -- to desperately scout for new allies. As the month-long voting that began April 16 progressed, some parties switched loyalties.
"It seems to be a very complex political situation. It is the complexity that makes it difficult to make any predictions," Kerala-based political analyst N.P. Chekutty told IANS, reflecting an opinion widely shared in the world's largest democracy.
Election officials estimated that some 60 percent of the 714 million electorate - more than the combined population of Russia and the US - had voted over five phases. The results will be known Saturday.
Wednesday's polling was largely peaceful but for the murder of a political worker in Tamil Nadu, where an alliance led by the AIADMK was poised to crush the ruling DMK and its partner Congress, and clashes in West Bengal, where the ruling Marxists are expected to suffer. They are tipped to get a beating in Kerala as well.
The exercise involved all 39 seats of Tamil Nadu, all four seats of Himachal Pradesh and all five seats of Uttarakhand besides two in Jammu and Kashmir, nine in Punjab, 11 in West Bengal and 14 in Uttar Pradesh besides one each in Chandigarh and Pondicherry.
The most notable of the 1,432 candidates included Home Minister P. Chidambaram of the Congress (Sivaganga, Tamil Nadu) and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee (South Kolkata).
Fearing uncertain times, Indian markets turned edgy Wednesday, with the key index Sensex losing 138 points from its last closing figure at end of trade.
"I'm fully confident that a BJP-led government will be formed at the centre. We will get new partners (after the polls)," BJP president Rajnath Singh said confidently. Within hours, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh asserted that his party would occupy the number one slot.
With neither the UPA nor NDA expected to cross the magic figure of 272 in the Lok Sabha, the Congress and BJP tried to outsmart one another in order to woo leaders of smaller and regional parties.
AIADMK chief and former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalitha, a key Third Front partner, said in Chennai: "There are feelers from many places. I am not responding to them now. Everything depends on the results. If the results are as expected, then I will go to Delhi."
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who in 2004 pulled off a coup by most unexpectedly worsting the BJP-led alliance in general elections, Wednesday telephoned estranged ally Ram Vilas Paswan after a fire in his house which adjoins her own in the heart of New Delhi.
An overview of the staggered five-phase general elections that started April 16 and ended May 13. Here are some of the facts:
Total voters - 713.77 million voters
Polling stations - 834,000
Poll observers - 2,046
Polling staff - 4.69 million
Parliamentary constituencies - 543
Assembly elections - Andhra Pradesh (294), Orissa (147) and Sikkim (32)
Total candidates - 8,070
Male candidates - 7,514
Women candidates - 556
Highest number of candidates - Chennai South (43)
Lowest number of candidates - Nagaland (3)
Highest polling station - Auley Phu in Leh, Ladakh (set up at an altitude of 15,300 feet)
Electronic Voting Machine and control units - control units (908,643) and ballot units (11,83,543)
Villages identified as vulnerable - 86,782
People booked under preventive sections - 373,861
Maoist-affected constituencies - 79 seats
High security deployment - 118,604 polling stations
Video-graphers - 74,729
Digital cameras - 40,599
Helicopters - 55
Re-polls - 648 polling stations
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