According to sources Tamilnadu’s Chief Electoral Officer announced on Friday that the overall voter turnout across the state for the Lok Sabha elections was 71.87%. Meanwhile Dharmapuri parliamentary constituency witnessed the highest voter turnout in the state at 80.49%, Chennai South registered a dismal 56.41%, the lowest in the state. Furthermore bye-polls to 18 state assembly seats were also held on Thursday with Sholingur registering the highest voter turnout at 82.26% and Perambur, the lowest at 64.14%.
Apparently the final figures also take into account polling in the Madurai district, which concluded two hours after the rest of the state on account of the extension it received due to the Chithirai festival happening there. Reportedly many voters said that they were turned away from polling booths because they did not have booth slips.
Moreover in a press conference in Chennai, CEO Satyabrata Sahoo also said that voters who faced deletion from voter lists could have availed special camps organized by the Election Commission (EC) prior to polling day. He said “The actual instructions given were that booth slips or voter slips cannot be used as ID card. ID card has to be taken along, where a lot of people standing in line took along both the booth slip and the ID card. Few people had taken along only the ID card. So, if booth slip and ID card had been taken along, there would have been no problem”.
