State Election Commissioner of Maharashtra, UPS Madan said that the elections to 12,711-gram panchayats spread across 34 districts in the state witnessed 79 percent voter turn-out. On Friday, polling was held for 1,25,709 seats, for which nominations had been received from 3,56,221 candidates.

As many as 34 districts in Maharashtra voted at Gram Panchayat level and the state election commissioner UPS Madan has said that all guidelines had been put in place for smooth conduct of the polls. Maharashtra has 27,920 Gram Panchayats and the polls covered 34 districts except Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban.

Madan added that there are nearly 20,000 panchayat seats in Maharashtra where candidates have been elected unopposed. However, 14 villages have boycotted the Gram Panchayat elections this year demanding to be a part of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, a Thane district official told news agency PTI.

With the 14 villages boycotting the polls, five Gram Panchayats in the district did not go for the vote. The counting of votes will be held on January 18.

The districts that had gone to polls are: Thane (158), Palghar (3), Raigad (88), Ratnagiri (479), Sindhudurg (70), Nashik (620), Dhule (218), Jalgaon (783), Ahmednagar (767), Nandurbar (86), Pune (748), Solapur (658), Satara (879), Sangli (152), Kolhapur (433), Aurangabad (618), Beed (129), Nanded (1,015), Osmanabad (428), Parbhani (566), Jalna (475), Latur (408), Hingoli (495), Amravati (553), Akola (225), Yavatmal (980), Washim (152), Buldhana (527), Nagpur (130), Wardha (50), Chandrapur (629), Bhandara (148), Gondia (189) and Gadchiroli (362).

Elections to 14,234 gram panchayats were announced on December 11 last year, but in some local governing bodies, elections were held completely or partially unopposed.

The gram panchayats are considered to be the third tier of governance. Elections for them are not held on party lines, using party symbols. Candidates are allotted election symbols from a list of free symbols.

The poll panel had earlier this week canceled the election process in Umrane and Khondamali gram panchayats in Nashik and Nandurbar districts, respectively, after it received evidence of auctioning of posts of the sarpanchs and other members.

The Commission also said that voting for 162 gram panchayats in six talukas of Gadchiroli, a Naxal-hit district, will be held on January 20.

“Due to several such reasons, voting was held for 12,711 gram panchayats on Friday. In Gadchiroli, votes will be counted on January 22. In the remaining districts, counting will take place on January 18,” the SEC’s statement said.

The gram panchayat polls were held in the wake of the ruling Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance’s victory in the graduates’ and teachers’ constituencies in the Legislative Council elections that took place last year. The alliance won four out of six seats, while an Independent candidate and the BJP won one each.