Jaipur, Nov 22 (IANS) Over 65 percent of 63.29 lakh voters cast their votes in Saturday’s elections for 46 civic bodies in Rajasthan including the Jaipur Municipal Corporation, officials said.

The voting percentage was higher than 61.79 percent recorded five years back

“The voting, which was held was held from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., was more or less peaceful. As per tentative figures, 65.66 percent voting was recorded. Only minor incidents like fights between supporters of political parties and allegations of bogus voting were reported from some of the places,” a senior official of the state election commission told IANS.

The counting will take place on Nov 25, the official said.

For the benefit of voters, EVMs were used at 6,135 polling booths.

Besides Jaipur, the other municipal corporations where elections were held included Jodhpur, Udaipur, Bikaner, Kota and Bharatpur.

The nagar parishads and nagar palikas which went to the polls included Beawar, Alwar, Pushkar, Banswara, Chabra, Barmer, Chittorgarh, Churu, Sri Ganganagar, Mount Abu, and Sirohi.

Around 7,391 candidates were in the fray for 1,680 wards of the 46 civic bodies.

In 16 of the wards, 10 candidates of the state’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and six of the Congress have already been declared elected unopposed.

Candidates of both BJP and the Congress contested in all the wards in these elections. Both the party took these polls seriously as almost all the ministers in Vasundhara Raje cabinet except Raje herself took active part in canvassing.

From the Congress side, it was state president Sachin Pilot who toured almost all the major areas to seek support for the party’s candidates.

Both the parties are claiming victory in these polls.

“We won in three of the four state assembly constituencies where by elections were held recently. Morale of party workers is high and we are hopeful of performing better in these polls,” a Congress functionary said.

“We are confident of sweeping these polls. The people will certainly vote for the developmental work Vasundhara Raje government has done in the 11 months since it came to power,” said state minister Arun Chaturvedi.