The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday released Lok Sabha constituency-wise data on the number of votes cast in the first five phases of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. This comes a day after the Supreme Court refused to issue directions to the poll body for uploading polling booth-wise data on the ECI website following a plea by an NGO. The ECI emphasised that the polling data has always been accessible through Form 17C.
Votes cast so far
Providing constituency-wise data, the ECI revealed that in the first phase, 11,00,52,103 votes were cast, followed by 10,58,30,572 in Phase 2, 11,32,34,676 in Phase 3, 12,24,69,319 in Phase 4 and 5,57,10,618 in Phase 5. The poll body clarified that the data does not include votes cast through Postal Ballots.
Furthermore, the ECI expressed concerns over attempts to create false narratives and disrupt the electoral process through mischievous means. The EC said it has decided to further expand the format of turnout data to include the absolute number of voters in every parliamentary constituency.
The absolute numbers are discernable parliamentary constituency-wise by all citizens by applying the turnout percentage to total electors, both already made available in the public domain, the poll panel said.
Electors are those who are part of the electoral roll and eligible to vote. Voters are those who actually cast their vote in an election. While EC had been issuing turnout percentage, there had been demands to make the actual number of voters in every phase public.
(With inputs from PTI)