Kendrapara, Nov. 15: Brisk polling was reported for the municipality election here as voters turned out in large numbers this morning forming serpentine queues to cast their franchise.

At places, long queues of voters waited till late evening hours for their turn to cast votes even after completion of the 5pm deadline. There was delayed polling in some booths because of malfunction of electronic voting machines (EVMs).

About 80 per cent of the town’s residents have reportedly turned out for the civic polls today.

“The polling was “peaceful and incident-free” and the turnout was encouraging in most of the town’s 32 polling booths,” said Kendrapara collector Pradipta Kishore Pattnaik.

Contrary to apprehension that was being expressed from various quarters, the polling turned out to be peaceful, to the relief of the authorities concerned. Burqa-clad women lined up in large numbers at the polling booths of minority community inhabited areas.

There was some delay in voting process in some of the booths because of technical snags in voting machines. There are also some reports of voters returning dejected from the booths after finding their names not figuring in the voters’ list.

Collector Pattnaik said: “Barring one or two incidents of malfunctioning or technical glitches in the EVMs in some booths, the polling went smooth. There were no cases of arrests for impersonation or bogus voting”.

“The EVMs will be kept locked in the district treasury. On Wednesday morning, the EVMs will be brought to the counting centre. The counting process will begin at 8am. It will take a couple of hours for the declaration of results,” he said.