Rangareddy: Amid peaceful completion of the first phase of polling for the ongoing gram panchayat elections on Thursday, the Ranga Reddy district registered a record 88.67% voting.

The polling was held in seven mandals--Farooqnagar, Shamshabad, Kothur, Nandigama, Keshampet, Kondurg and Jilled Chowdergudem for 174 GP seats and 1,530 wards. Of the 2,11,544 registered voters, 187,580 electors turned out to exercise their right to vote. Kothur mandal topped with 91.27% polling among the mandals. Surprisingly, no mandal saw less than 80% voting from 9 am to 1 pm. As per the polling pattern, 15,346 out of a total 16,813 voters in the mandal voted, that makes the polling percentage touch the mark of 91.27 by 1 pm. Keshampet mandal stood second with 89.9% polling followed by Nandigama (88.87 %), Farooqnagar (88.65 %), Kondurg (88.62 %), Jilled Chowdergudem (87.49 %) and Shamshabad (86.85 %).

The poll statistic shows that of the 2,11,544 voters registered in the mandals, 93,598 men and 93,979 women voters(1,87,580 voters) exercised their franchise; 22.81% voting was registered by 9 am, which went up to 54.35% by 11 am and 80.67% by 1 pm.

Meanwhile, collector C Narayana Reddy made surprise visits to booths. He took stock of the arrangements and the polling process along with other senior officials. Reddy interacted with the presiding officers and enquired about the exercise of verifying serial numbers of voters in the electoral list before along they to cast votes. He examined the list of sarpanch and ward members contesting on the polling booth premises.

He said everyone who is in queue within the polling station premises before 1 pm should be given the opportunity to vote. The collector strictly asked the election officers not to allow anyone into the premises after 1 pm.