Tamil Nadu Assembly polls end peacefully, voter turnout 71.79 per cent
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The 71-plus polling percentage is likely to go up with completion of data collation, Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo told reporters. The EVMs and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail units functioned well and less than one per cent warranted replacements, he said.
Kallakurichi recorded the highest of 78 per cent and Chennai at 59.40 per cent was the lowest, he said adding other information like votes cast by men and women shall be made available later. Figures for Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat, which witnessed bypoll are expected later.
Tamil Nadu has 6.28 crore voters and a total of 3,998 candidates were in the fray.
No serious law and order issues were witnessed in the state and polling was by and large peaceful, he added.
In 2016, Tamil Nadu witnessed 74.26 per cent voter turnout and polls were held for 232 constituencies out of the total 234 that year and polls for two seats were held later.
The polls, that began at 7 AM and ended at 7 PM witnessed several COVID-19 affected people voting with Personal Protective Equipment on and DMK Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi was among them.
Sahoo said the final tally of COVID-19 affected people, who voted would be made available later.
The state had 88,937 polling stations, 1,29,165 ballot units, 91,180 control units (which comprise the Electronic Voting Machine) and an equal number of VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) units.
As many as 4,17,521 polling personnel were on duty and over 1.50 lakh security personnel including those from state police, Central Armed Police Force, and home guards were deployed.
There were 10,813 vulnerable polling stations and 537 critical and webcasting was done from '50 per cent' of the polling stations.
The DMK, in alliance with Congress and other parties is eyeing capturing power from arch rival AIADMK after 10 long years in the opposition.
The ruling AIADMK is pinning its hopes on its government's performance and poll assurances to retain power yet again. The ruling party snatched power from DMK in 2011 and retained power in 2016.
(From PTI with edits)