Agartala, Feb 16 (IANS): India's northeastern state of Tripura made electoral history when a record 93.57 percent votes were cast in Thursday's election to the 60-seat assembly, officials said here Saturday.
"About 93.57 percent of the 23,55,446 electorates have exercised their franchise and this was an all time high percentage of votes polled in any election in India," said Ashutosh Jindal, the chief electoral officer (CEO) of Tripura.
He said: "Since the first elections in 1952 in the country, this was an all time record in the electoral history of India."
Tripura recorded around 92 percent polling in the last assembly elections in 2008.
Like the previous elections in Tripura, more women voters cast the ballot than their male counterparts.
"Of the total of 11,98,970 male voters, 90.89 percent cast their votes while 93.02 percent of the 11,56,476 female electorates have exercised their franchise in the polls," Jindal told IANS.
Through the postal ballots, 38,561 of the total of 50,000 polling and security personnel cast their votes.
According to the CEO, before Tripura, the previous record of high polling percentage was in Sikkim, where more than 87 percent votes had been polled in the 2004 assembly elections. "That record had beaten by Tripura in the last assembly polls."
Jindal said that of the 60 assembly constituencies, maximum of 95.12 percent and minimum of 84.26 percent votes have been polled in Boxanagar and Banamalipur assembly segments respectively in western Tripura.
Interestingly, Tripura's smallest polling station - the Malirai Royajapara Junior Basic School under the tribal reserved Raimavalley assembly constituency in northern Tripura, about 185 km north of here, has only 86 voters; 80 of them cast their votes.
The ballots will be counted Feb 28. Sixty counting halls are being set up in 17 locations across the state.
The Feb 14 polls have decided the electoral fate of 249 candidates, including 15 women and many independents.
The Election Commission has deployed specially modified electronic voting machines in all 3,041 polling stations across the northeastern state to check possible malpractice and other irregularities.
About 18,000 poll officials, including four teams of polling personnel comprising only women, were posted to conduct the elections.
The Election Commission had also appointed over 2,000 micro-observers to assist 48 general, expenditure and police observers to oversee electioneering.