BANGALORE: A voting percentage of 61.6 per cent was recorded across the five Assembly constituencies where bypolls were held on Tuesday, in what the Election Commission described as “peaceful” and “incident-free” polling.
Govindarajnagar, Ramanagaram, Channapatna, Kollegal and Chittapur — between them, registered a 3.3 per cent increase over the voting percentage they had registered during the general elections in April-May this year. In the collective analysis, only Kollegal recorded voting percentage less than the general election tally: its voting percentage on Tuesday was 64 against April-May’s 67.23.
Govindarajnagar in Bangalore held testimony to the urban voters’ apathy recording the lowest voter turnout among the five segments. But it threw up a brighter side scoring over its tally in both the general elections 2009 and Assembly elections 2008. It recorded a polling percentage of 48 against the 42.66 per cent in April 2009, and 42.4 per cent in April-May 2008. Counting will be held on Friday, August 21.
Addressing the media, Chief Electoral Officer C S Suranjan said that going by the “preliminary assessment” of the day, “no booth calls for a re-poll”.
Minor technical hitches with voting machines were found at six polling stations and were attended to and replaced.
Polling was not affected. Channapatna and Govindarajnagar made for two each of these cases and Kollegal and Chittapur made for one each.
Suranjan also noted that the 61.6 per cent polling includes voters who were in the queue before the polling stations at 5 pm. The final tally may vary by two per cent, he said.
