Marginal drop in Meghalaya turnout

SHILLONG, FEB 24: Meghalaya continued it tradition of voting in large numbers in the Assembly elections by recording voter turnout of 88.06 per cent during Saturday’s polling to elect the state’s 9^th Assembly, which is a marginal fall of .98 per cent from the 2008 polls that had recorded 89.04 per cent turnout.

State’s chief electoral officer P Naik told reporters here on Sunday that 13,23,110 out of the 15,02,509 registered voters cast their votes with the Nartiang constituency recording the highest voter turnout of 94.88 per cent, and conversely, Shillong North constituency with 71. 45 per cent recorded the lowest turnout.

Asked to ascribe the reasons for the marginal drop in voting percentage, Naik said various factors could have led to the fall, but it was difficult to accurately pinpoint any one or more reasons.

““There can be many factors that can be attributed. Maybe the bandh called by the HNLC could be one of the factors, or there may be many students (unable to vote) who have moved out of the state for further studies…It is very difficult to answer this. We from the department can only motivate the people to cast their votes,” he said, while expressing satisfaction over the manner the entire poll process has proceeded so far.

Naik said all poll personnel have returned to their respective stations after overseeing the polling. The counting of votes, he added, will be taken up at 13 centres spread across the state from 8 a.m. onwards on February 28.

On the BJP’s demand for re-poll in four polling booths under Nartiang constituency, the election officer said he had sought a report from the deputy commissioner of Jaintia Hills. “As per the information received so far, there is unlikely to be any re-poll in the state, but I am yet to get the reports from  (all) the deputy commissioners,” he said. By Suraj Joshi