61% voting in Maharashtra Assembly polls, less than 2014 turnout

The Maharashtra Assembly polls held on Monday saw a voter turnout of 61.13 per cent, a dip from the 63.20 per cent recorded in 2014, election officials said here on Tuesday.

The final polling figure was released late Tuesday evening.

The highest turnout, of 83.93 per cent, was reported in the Karveer assembly seat in Kolhapur, while the lowest was in south Mumbai's upmarket Colaba area at 40.11 per cent.

In the lone Lok Sabha bypoll held in the state, in Satara, the voter turnout was 67.15 per cent, the officials said.

The Satara bypoll was necessitated after NCP MP Udayanraje Bhosale quit the party and his Lok Sabha seat and joined the ruling BJP, which renominated him from the western Maharashtra constituency.

Bhosale's main challenger is Srinivas Patil of the NCP.

Rural areas of the state fared better, with voters there showing more enthusiasm than their urban counterparts, the officials said.

Polling began at 7 am and ended at 6 pm on Monday, though many who were in queue at polling booths at the time were allowed to cast their votes.

The ruling BJP-Shiv Sena combine is arrayed against the opposition Congress-NCP with the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi being the dominant player among the other parties.

Most exit polls, released immediately after polling ended on Monday evening, have given the ruling alliance a comfortable majority in the 288-member Assembly.

The state has 8,98,39,600 voters, including 1,06,76,013 in the age group of 18 to 25 years. Nearly 6.5 lakh polling personnel were deployed at 96,661 polling booths across the state.

Counting of votes will take place on October 24.