Maharashtra Voters Face Heat and Glitches During Polls: Aaditya Thackeray Highlights Issues

Amid ongoing voting in 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra, Aaditya Thackeray and Aadesh Bandekar raised concerns over facilities and technical glitches. Voters faced heat and long wait times due to malfunctioning EVMs, affecting senior citizens. Calls for basic amenities like shade and fans to improve voter experience have been made.

Amid voting underway in 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray on Monday claimed there were lot of complaints from electors about facilities outside the polling booths.

Voters were trying to beat the heat and exercise their franchise in large numbers, the former state minister said, adding that electors should at least be made to queue up in shade and provided fans.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aadesh Bandekar claimed the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were not working at a polling booth in Powai are of Mumbai due to which people had to wait for two hours. Due to the glitch, some senior citizens left without voting, Bandekar claimed in a post on Instagram.

Polling was underway since 7 am in 13 Lok Sabha constituencies of Maharashtra, including six in Mumbai, and will continue till 6 pm.

''A lot of complaints from voters about the facilities outside the booths @ECISVEEP Atleast having the voter lines in shade/ fans could help. They don't want much, just basics to stay cool. Please look into it,'' Thackeray said in a post on X.

Some of the electors in Mumbai said they went to the polling booths early in the morning to beat the heat.

Altogether 2.46 crore persons are eligible to cast vote to decide the fate of 264 candidates in the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Bharati Pawar and Kapil Patil are among the key nominees of the BJP, which has also fielded lawyer Ujjwal Nikam.

Shiv Sena's Shrikant Shinde and Mumbai Congress chief Varsha Gaikwad are also in the fray.

Goyal, Patil and Gaikwad cast their votes early in the morning.

Various other prominent persons, including RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, industrialist Anil Ambani, Bollywood celebrities Akshay Kumar and Farhan Akhtar, were also among the early voters in Mumbai.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)