In Maharashtra, as many as 34 districts are voting today in over 14,000 Gram Panchayats. State election commissioner UPS Madan has said that all guidelines have been put in place for smooth conduct of the polls.

Maharashtra has 27,920 Gram Panchayats and the polls will cover 34 districts except Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban. The polling began at 7:30 am and will conclude at 5:30 pm, barring four tehsils in left-wing extremist districts of Gadchiroli and Gondia where it will end at 3 pm.  “All preparations have been made and the teams are in place,” Madan had said on Thursday.

He 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 will not be voting today. The counting of votes will be held on January 18.

The districts that have gone to polls today 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).

Voting was cancelled for Umrane and Khondamali Gram Panchayats in Nashik and Nandurbar districts, respectively, after the public allegedly auctioned off the posts of sarpanch and members of local governing bodies.

The Gram Panchayat polls are being held in the wake of the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s victory in the recently-concluded Legislative Council elections for graduates’ and teachers’ constituencies.

The MVA had won four out of the six seats contested, while the two others were secured by an Independent candidate and the BJP. The Gram Panchayat polls are being observed as a parameter to gauge the public mood in rural areas.

The State Election Commission had on January 13 stated that those who are either suffering from Covid-19 infection, or having been quarantined, can cast their ballot half an hour before the voting ends.

However, the body temperature of voters who do not have coronavirus, but live in containment zones, will be checked twice.