74.85 per cent voting in MP Assembly polls

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh registered a record 74.85 per cent turn-out in Wednesday's Assembly polls, according to the revised data issued by the Election Commission (EC) on Thursday.

The EC has also recommended re-polling at a booth in Anuppur constituency, said the state's Chief Electoral Officer V L Kantha Rao. On Wednesday, after the polling ended, the poll body had said that 74.61 per cent of voters exercised their franchise as per the preliminary estimate. "We have got revised data and observers are still scrutinising it. So there may be some minor change in the next couple of days.

According to the revised data, MP saw a turn-out of 74.85 per cent, or around 3.77 crore voters," Rao told the reporters Thursday. The total number of eligible voters was 5.04 crore. As much as 75.72 per cent male and 73.86 per cent of female voters exercised their franchise, he said. In 2013 Assembly polls, 72.13 per cent voting was registered. Rao said at a booth in Mogdi in Anuppur segment, there was a difference of 56 in the number of voters' signatures in the register with the presiding officer and the number of votes recorded in the Electronic Voting Machine.

"So the poll observer has recommended repolling," he said, and added that this mismatch occurred due to inept handling of EVMs by an employee. The Election Commission will take further decision in this regard, he said. Notices were also served to 289 candidates by returning officers for not submitting details of expenditure, he said. As many as 2,899 candidates, including 1,094 independents, are in the fray for 230 seats in the state. The main contest is between opposition Congress and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).