Delhi witnessed a record voter turnout on Wednesday with 65 per cent voters exercising their franchise in the Assembly elections.
The previous highest was in 1993 when 61.75 per cent voters cast their votes.
The final figure will go up as polling was on till late in the evening at several booths around the city, Delhi’s Chief Election Officer Vijay Dev said at a media briefing in the evening.
“The polls have been incident-free and without any complications. According to the law, all the voters inside the polling station by 5 p.m. will be allowed to cast their votes, whether polling goes on till 7 p.m. or 10 p.m.,” he said, adding it was wrong to say the polling time was extended beyond the 5 p.m. deadline.
Election Commission officials added that even at 7:30 p.m. there were a few polling stations where polling was still on.
Free and fair Terming the polls “free and fair”, Dev said a record 42,000 litres of liquor, valued at Rs 1 crore, and unaccounted cash of over Rs 1.64 crore were seized.
In 2008, the total electorate strength was at 1.7 crore, which increased to 1.19 crore this year. There were over 11,900 polling stations this year, compared with 11,100 stations in the previous election.