question_answer 13)

                                              Election result in Gulbarga Let us go back to our example of Gulbarga. In 2004, a total of 11 candidates contested elections in that constituency. The total eligible voters were 14.39 lakhs. Of these 8.28 lakh voters had cast their votes. The candidate of the Congress party, Iqbal Ahmed Saradgi secured about 3.12 lakh votes. This was only about 38% of the total votes polled. But since he had secured more votes than anyone else, he was declared elected a Member of Parliament from Gulbarga Lok Sabha constituency.   Election Result of Gulbarga Constituency, General Election to Lok Sabha 2004.  

Candidate	Party	Votes Polled	%  of Votes
Iqbal Ahmed Saradgi	INC	312432	37.76
Basawaraj Patil Sedam	BJP	254548	30.82
Vithal Heroor	JD (S)	189001	22.84
Suryakant Nimbalkar	BSP	26723	3.23
Sanganna	IND	15213	1.84
Arun Kumar Chandrashekara Patil	KNDP	7155	0.86
Bhagavanreddy  B	IND	6748	0.82
Hamid Pasha Sarmast	MUL	4268	0.52
Basawanth Rao Revansiddappa Sheelwanth	AIFB	3900	0.47
Sandeep C Bandak	USYP	3671	0.44
Umesh Havanoor	SP	3380	0.41

  (i) What is the percentage of voters who had actually cast their votes?   (ii) To win an election is it necessary for a person to secure more than half the votes polled?  

Answer:

(i) 57.54 per cent of total voters cast their own votes.   (ii)To win an election, it is not necessary for a person to secure more than half the votes polled, because the candidate who secures the highest number of votes from a constituency is declared elected.