Elections to the Assem-blies of five states, staggered across a little over a month, ended on Saturday with Uttar Pradesh and Goa joining Punjab and Uttarakhand in breaking previous records and mar-king their highest ever voter turnouts. Counting will take place March 6.
In UP 62.04 per cent of voters cast their votes in the seventh and last phase of elections, spread over 60 Assembly segments across the 10 districts of Lakhimpur, Bareilly, Sha-hjahanpur, Rampur, Bad-aun, Moradabad, Bijnore, J.P. Nagar, Bhim Nagar and Pilibhit. This voter turnout is the highest of all seven phases. In Goa, a record 81 per cent voted.
Thanking the UP electorate for exercising their franchise with a huge turnout, Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said, “The turnout in UP was highest, at around 60 per cent, recording an increase of 30.23 per cent over the 2007 turnout.”
Pointing to the higher percentage of women voting, Dr Quraishi said, “It is more than the turnout of men, which is 57.82 per cent. This is specially significant in view of the adverse gender ratio of voters in UP which is 816 women to 1,000 men.” Of the total women electors, 59.85 per cent came out to vote in the 2012 Assembly polls, against 41.92 per cent in the 2007 polls.
Chief electoral officer Umesh Sinha said in Lucknow the average turnout for all seven phases was 59.16 per cent, which could be termed the highest ever in UP.