A high voter turnout of 74.39 per cent was recorded in the bypoll to the Naxal-hit Chitrakot Assembly constituency in Chhattisgarh till the scheduled deadline of 5 pm on Monday, an election official here said.
The voting till 5 pm was peaceful and those standing in queues in the premises of polling booths after the official end of voting will be allowed to exercise their democratic right and this may push up the final turnout figure, he said.
Six candidates are in the fray from the Naxal-affected seat reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) nominees, but the main contest is between the ruling Congress and the opposition BJP.
The bypoll in the assembly segment, which falls in the Bastar region, became necessary after sitting Congress MLA Deepak Baij resigned after winning from the Bastar Lok Sabha constituency in May.
The voting in Chitrakot, which has 1,67,911 eligible voters, is spread across two districts, began at 8 am amid tight security.
"After the deadline for voting ended at 5 pm, 74.39 percent voter turnout was recorded in the Chitrakot seat," he said.
However, the figure is provisional and might go up as voters were waiting in queues outside several polling booths after the deadline for voting ended, the official added.
No untoward incident was reported in the constituency during the polling process which was by and large peaceful, he said.
The presiding officer at the Matnar polling booth (No. 15) was replaced after a complaint was received against him, the official said without providing details.
Earlier in the day, Chhattisgarh Janata Congress (J) state president Amit Jogi posted a video on his Twitter handle, which he claimed, shows the presiding officer of Matnar directing people to vote in favour of the Congress.
In the video, a man, said to be the presiding officer, is purportedly seen telling something to a voter while pointing towards the EVM (electronic voting machine) when the elector appears ready to cast his ballot.
However, Congress MP Deepak Baij accused the same presiding officer of acting in favour of the BJP.
A total of 229 polling booths were set up for the bypoll - 213 in Bastar district and 16 in the neighbouring Sukma district, he said.
Of the total booths, around 70 booths were categorised as 'hyper-sensitive' and 93 as 'sensitive', he said.
Around 8,000 personnel, including paramilitary forces, were deployed, while drones were also used to keep an eye on polling booths from the sky, a police official said.
The Congress has fielded a new face, Rajman Benzam, a local tribal leader and president of the Bastar district Congress (Rural), while the BJP has given ticket to former MLA Lachhuram Kashyap, who lost last year.
During the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress' Baij had defeated Kashyap by 17,770 votes.
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