Voting for Ramgarh bypolls on Monday, counting of votes on March 2

Ramgarh: The voting for the by-polls on the Ramgarh seat of the Jharkhand Assembly will be held on Monday in which eligible voters will be able to cast their votes across the polling booths from 7 am to 5 pm. More than two thousand polling personnel have been deployed for the voting of the Ramgarh assembly by-election.

Of these, 2025 polling personnel, 69 sector magistrates, 63 micro observers have been appointed. A total of 405 polling stations have been set up in 233 buildings in four blocks of Ramgarh district. 118 polling stations have been set up in Ramgarh block, 64 in Dulmi block, 70 in Chitarpur block and 153 in Gola block and 55 sectors and 10 clusters have been created. More than half of the total polling stations are highly sensitive. 

An adequate police force has been deployed for the smooth conduct of elections. Out of 405 polling stations in the Ramgarh assembly constituency, 244 polling stations are highly sensitive, 114 sensitive and 47 general polling stations. After voting on Monday, the ballot boxes will be kept in the strong room built in Ramgarh College. The counting of votes will take place on March 2 in the counting hall set up at Ramgarh College. 

There are 18 candidates in the fray for the by-polls but the main battle is between Bajrang Mahto of Congress and Sunita Chowdhary of the AJSU party. The by-polls were necessitated on the seat after Congress MLA Mamta Devi lost the membership of the house after she was awarded five years of imprisonment by a Hazaribagh MP-MLA court on December 13, 2022 in connection with the Gola Firing Incident case.

The bypoll is fifth in the present tenure of Mahagathbandhan government of Jharkhand being led by JMM’s Hemant Soren as after coming to power in December 2019 it had to face bypolls in Dumka Bermo Madhupur and Mandar in which all the seats were saved by the parties in power.

As a UPA candidate of the Congress party Mamta Devi had managed to win the Ramgarh seat and had gone on to become a first-time MLA. She had got a total of 99,944 votes while Sunita Chowdhary wife of Giridih MP Chandraprakash Chowdhary had secured 71,226 votes to come at the second position while Rananjay Kumar alias Kantu Babu of BJP had finished third having got 31,874 votes.