The Election Commission said on Tuesday that the tentative turnout in phase two of the Bihar Assembly election and byelections to 28 seats in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly was 54.64% and 69.93% respectively.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday evening, EC secretary-general Sinha thanked voters for casting their ballots despite the COVID-19 pandemic. With phase one polling on October 28, Deputy Election Commissioner (DEC) in-charge of Bihar Chandra Bhushan Kumar said 165 out of the 243 constituencies had been covered in the two phases. There had been 420 Model Code of Conduct (MCC) violations in phase two, he said.
Seizure of cash and other illegal items had more than doubled from ₹23.81 crore in the 2015 Bihar Assembly polls to ₹65.22 crore as on Tuesday morning, he said. In the byelections to 54 seats, the authorities had made seizures of a total of ₹30 crore. Madhya Pradesh accounted for seizures of ₹28.42 crore, DEC Sudeep Jain added.
In Madhya Pradesh, there had been 1,137 MCC violations for which FIRs were filed in 447 cases, Mr Jain said. One case of paid news had also been reported in Madhya Pradesh.
Mr. Jain said polling was peaceful in Madhya Pradesh, apart from on incident of firing at a polling station in Morena, boycott of electors of two stations in Shivpuri district and smashing of the control unit of one EVM in Bhind district.
Of the EVMs deployed in Bihar, the replacement rate was 0.36% of ballot units, 0.37% of control units and 1.31% of VVPAT. In the by-elections in 10 States, 0.4% of ballot units, 0.37% of control units and 1.8% of VVPATs were replaced, Mr Jain said.
Turnout in bypolls in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Nagaland, Odisha, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh by-elections was estimated to be 77.25%, 58.66%, 68%, 62.51%, 57.04%, 88.14%, 69.02%, 82.60% and 53.71% respectively, according to the EC.