The Election Commission (ECI) has released constituency-wise data on the number of votes cast in the first five phases of the Lok Sabha elections, a day after the Supreme Court refused an NGO’s plea to issue the ECI to upload authenticated, scanned and legible copies of Form 17C showing the account of votes recorded booth-wise. While releasing this data on Saturday, the ECI asserted that there is a pattern of creating false narratives and mischievous design to vitiate the electoral process. It said that any alteration in the number of votes polled is not possible.
The EC said it has decided to further expand the format of turnout data to include the absolute number of voters in every parliamentary constituency. The absolute numbers are discernable parliamentary constituency-wise by all citizens by applying the turnout percentage to total electors, both already made available in the public domain, the poll panel said. Electors are those who are part of the electoral roll and eligible to voters. Voters are those who actually cast their vote in an election.
While EC had been issuing turnout percentage, there had been demands to make the actual number of voters in every phase public. (With inputs from PTI)
