 "(Clockwise from top) Union Home Minister Amit Shah with wife Sonal Shah; Samajwadi Party candidate Dimple Yadav; Adani group Chairman Gautam Adani and his wife Priti Adani during the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday | (Photos: PTI)")
Close to 62 per cent eligible voters turned up at polling booths across 93 Lok Sabha constituencies on Tuesday in the third phase, as the general elections reached the halfway mark.
Votes have now been cast in 283 out of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats.
Till 8pm, the Election Commission (EC) had reported a voter turnout of 61.45 per cent.
In 2019, the BJP had won 71 of these 93 seats and also Surat, where polling was not held as the BJP’s candidate has already been declared elected.
The EC also released the data of total number of electors in each of the constituencies that polled on Tuesday.
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The voting turnout in phases I and II of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls was 66.14 per cent and 66.71 per cent, respectively. The final voter turnout figure for these two phases had seen an upward revision of nearly five per cent from the data collated and released by the EC until the evening of these polling days.
According to a State Bank of India (SBI) Research paper released Monday, the revised voter turnout in phases I and II was lower by 3.1 per cent if compared with the corresponding phases of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The SBI Research said the voter turnout in phase III of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls was 68.4 per cent. It said the voter turnout in phase I of 2019 was 69.4 per cent and 69.3 per cent in phase II five years back.
Notably, several seats in Karnataka registered an improved turnout on Tuesday compared with 2019, including Belgaum, Bijapur, Gulbarga and Raichur. The voter turnout recorded at 8pm on the 14 seats of Karnataka that polled on Tuesday, was 68.67 per cent, which is close to 68.9 per cent that was registered on these seats five years back. The polling in Karnataka concluded on Tuesday as its other 14 seats had voted on April 26.
However, voter turnout in Maharashtra, where 11 seats polled on Tuesday, remained poor at 55 per cent compared to 63.86 per cent in 2019.
Baramati, where Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar)’s Supriya Sule is contesting against NCP’s Sunetra Pawar, the voter turnout was 47.84 per cent. In 2019, the voter turnout in Baramati was 61.82 per cent. The NCP (SP) lodged more than 200 complaints against the NCP led by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in Baramati constituency for allegedly indulging in malpractices like cash distribution to voters, party MLA Rohit Pawar claimed. The NCP rejected Rohit Pawar’s allegations.
According to the Election Commission data, available on its voter turnout app on Tuesday evening, Assam, where polling took place on four seats, witnessed the highest voter turnout at 75.3 per cent while the average for the two seats of Goa was 74.47 per cent. Maharashtra registered the lowest.
A voter turnout of 57 per cent was recorded in Gujarat’s 25 seats. It was 64.51 per cent in 2019. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah cast their votes at polling booths in Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, respectively.
In Uttar Pradesh, where several members of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav's family are contesting, 57.34 per cent polling was recorded in 10 seats.
It was 60.02 per cent in 2019.
The voter turnout in Mainpuri, where SP has fielded incumbent MP Dimple Yadav, was 58.59 per cent, nearly two percentage points better than 2019’s 56.77 per cent.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the BJP workers were trying to "loot booths" in Mainpuri and people from opposition parties were being detained in police stations.
In West Bengal, the ruling Trinamool Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress-CPI (M) alliance lodged separate complaints related to poll violence, voter intimidation, and assaults on poll agents.
Two government officials on poll duty died in Karnataka after suffering a heart attack, sources in the Election Commission said.
Union ministers Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra) were in the fray in phase three as were former chief ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Vidisha), Digvijaya Singh (Rajgarh) and Basavaraj Bommai (Haveri). The voter turnout in Vidisha was 72.43 per cent, a percentage point better than 2019’s in that seat. The voter turnout was also healthy in Rajgarh and Guna.
