Kollam: Kollam witnessed huge polling rate with total per cent of 73.03 against last year’s 72.09. The Chavara assembly segment mark-ed the highest polling am-ong constituencies with 75.39 per cent. There were a total of 1947 polling stations for 20.8 lakh voters to cast their vote.
The voting process got delayed for at least an hour after the VVPAT machines were found to be faulty in many places. There was also compla-int of bogus voting in bo-oth number 50 at SNDPUP school in Pattatha-nam here.
In Kollam constituency, there are seven assembly segments - Chavara, Koll-am, Eravipuram, Kundara, Chathannoor, Chaday-amangalam, and Punalur. The main contest will be between the candidates N.K. Premachandran of UDF trying to maintain the sitting seat and K.N. Balagopal of LDF. In Lok Sabha elections 2014 N.K. Premachandran won for 4,08,528 votes while LDF’s M.A. Baby came second with 3,70,879 votes.
The vote share of UDF was 46.46% while that of LDF, 42.57%.
