CHENNAI: Under fire over the wide difference in voting percentage that the Election Commission released at night on Friday and a few hours later on Saturday, Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu, Satyabrata Sahoo, said on Monday that the voting percentage was arrived at based on the data available in Voter Turnout Application.
As only a few presiding officers uploaded the data on voting percentage, it led to misleading numbers, he said in a statement.
The glaring difference in overall polling percentage in the Lok Sabha election in Tamil Nadu between the data shared by the Tamil Nadu Public Election Department at 7 pm on Friday and the final figure furnished during the wee hours of Saturday raised many an eyebrow in the State.
The overall difference between the two was 2.63 percentage points (72.09% as per Friday 7 pm figures, which went down to 69.49% according to the count at 12.15 am on Saturday).
But it was much more pronounced in the case of some constituencies, especially the ones in Chennai.
In the capital city, the polling percentage differs by 9 to 13 percentage points between the two data shared by the authorities in a gap of five hours.