Fourth phase of LS polls records 63% voting among 96 seats
The fourth phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha (LS) elections recorded an average voter turnout of 63 per cent till 8 pm, the Election Commission (EC) said on Monday, which is lower than the 2019 voting percentage of a little over 69 per cent.
Held in 96 seats across 10 states and Union Territories (UTs), the highlight of Monday’s polling was an improved voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir’s Srinagar seat at 37 per cent, which is the highest since the 1996 LS polls when 40.94 per cent voter turnout was registered, EC officials said.
However, a deflated turnout was witnessed in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, at 56.53 per cent against 69.31 per cent in 2019, where the Congress had appealed to the electorate to press NOTA (none of the above) after its candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrawn his nomination and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the last moment.
While Srinagar’s 37 per cent voting turnout was the lowest across the 96 seats that polled in Phase-IV, it was significantly better than the 14.43 per cent recorded in 2019 due to a call for poll boycott.
There were 24 candidates, the highest in three decades, in the fray for the Srinagar seat, which was redrawn after the delimitation exercise was undertaken recently.