Telangana and Rajasthan reported provisional voter turnout of 67 per cent and 72.62 per cent respectively, senior officials of the Election Commission (EC) said here on Friday evening.

Polling took place in 51 districts covering 199 Assembly constituencies in Rajasthan and 31 districts in Telangana covering 119 Assembly constituencies.

In both the States, the final figures are expected to be higher as voters were still queueing up to cast their ballot, said officials. They added that voting was peaceful, barring a few incidents in both the States.

Rajat Kumar, Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana, also said no major incidents were reported in the State.

Telangana had reported a voter turnout of 69.5 per cent during Assembly elections in 2013, while Rajasthan recorded a voter turnout of 75.23 per cent.

During the recently concluded elections, Telangana reported brisk voter turnout in rural areas while in Hyderabad “it was a little less” said officials, adding that voters included women, youth, senior citizens and people with disabilities.

While 2.8 crore voters were eligible to cast their vote in Telangana, over 4.74 crore voters were entitled to vote in Rajasthan during the elections which concluded on Friday.

Maoist regions

In Telangana, while the polling was conducted from 7 am to 5 pm in 106 constituencies, in the 13 Maoist affected constituencies, the polling was held till 4 pm as a precautionary measure. The elections will decide the fate of about 1,800 candidates in the fray.

The Telangana election has seen a hard fought contest between the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and Praja Kutami, a coalition of the Congress, the TDP, the Telangana Jana Samithi and the Left parties. While the BJP is contesting on its own, the All India MIM is contesting in Hyderabad, which has been the latter’s stronghold over the years.

Devices in order

Officials said that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and the Verifiable Voter Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) functioned well during the elections in both the States.

In Telangana, only 394 ballot units of the over 46,000 units that were used were replaced.

The officials denied allegations of EVMs being misused, adding that in Madhya Pradesh, the strong room for storing the EVMs was close to a Reliance Jio mobile tower which was not functioning properly.

“The strong room was about 100 metres away from the mobile tower which people repaired. We have three layers of security for the strong room,” said an official.

In response to a question on whether in Rajasthan an EVM and a VVPAT were found to be in the wrong place, officials said that a poll official had taken the reserve EVM and VVPAT away the previous evening. The concerned poll official has been served a show-cause notice, the EC said in Delhi.

During the latest round of elections, authorities seized ₹136.89 crore, including ₹115.19 crore in cash and 5.453 lakh litres of liquor, in Telangana, while in Rajasthan ₹86.46 crore was seized, including ₹12.85 crore in cash and liquor worth ₹39.49 crore.

The focus now shifts to December 11, when counting will be taken up for Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Chhattisgarh, along with Telangana and Rajasthan.

While Chhattisgarh saw two-phase poll on November 12 and 20, Mizoram and Madhya Pradesh completed their polls on November 25.

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