The first day of voting at postal ballot facilitation booths in Sarpang went smoothly.

The dzongkhag’s electoral officer, Sonam Wangda, said: “Including two mobile facilitation booths, we are operating five facilitation booths.”

The facilitation booths are located at the Sarpang Central School, Gelephu Higher Secondary School, and Jigmeling Police Training Institute.

The busiest of the facilitation booths in the dzongkhag was the one at Gelephu High School, which has a total of 2,867 voters.

About 370 people had voted at the Gelephu High School by 2.30pm.

A total of 5,095 eligible postal voters have registered to vote at various facilitation booths in the dzongkhag, according to the facilitation booth statistics released by the election commission for the primary. Of them, 2,260 are men and 2,835 are women.

The dzongkhag saw a voter turnout of 80.5 percent at the facilitation booths in the primary.

A total of 945 voters have registered to vote at Sarpang Central School. The facilitation booth also did not witness voter rush, according to poling officials at the school.

Presiding officer at Sarpang Central School, NP Chamlagai, told Kuensel that people turned up to vote at regular intervals although they were small in numbers. “Most of the voters in the facilitation booths are civil servants and students,” he said.

About 100 voters had cast their ballot as of the lunchtime yesterday, according to the presiding officer.

Officials at Jigmeling Police Training Institute said that 107 people had voted at the facilitation booth by 1pm.

There are 688 postal ballot voters at the facilitation booth. Voters at the centre consist of police personnel and their dependents.

Yesterday, polling officials operated mobile facilitation booths at Losel Gyatsho Academy, Pelrithang Middle Secondary School, and Kuendrup Higher Secondary School.

Today, the mobile facilitation booth will be operated at Norbuling Central School, Umling Lower Secondary School, the district prison at Pelrithang, and Gelephu Higher Secondary School.

The mobile facilitation booth will be taken to Jigmeling Police Training Institute and Dolonggang in Dekiling gewog tomorrow.

The head of the election commission’s postal ballot unit, Namgay Tshering, in an earlier interview, said that the commission encourages postal voters to vote at facilitation booths to reduce the chances of the vote getting rejected.

Out of the total 110,538 postal ballots received in the primary round of election, 1,234 were rejected due mostly to missing Identity Declaration Certificate (IDC) and missing or wrong details in the IDC.

MB Subba | Gelephu