"Completely unacceptable...": Congress criticises EC over delay in sharing phase 1, 2 voting data

New Delhi [India], May 2 : The Congress on Wednesday criticised the Election Commission for the delay in sharing the data of overall voter turnout of phase 1 and 2 in the Lok Sabha elections, saying that the delay by the apex poll body was "completely unacceptable".
Congress general secretary of communication Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X, also said that two issues have 'emerged' with the ECI's latest data release.
"Late last night, after a completely unacceptable delay of 11 days for Phase I and 4 days for Phase 2, the ECI finally released the voter turnout data. However, two issues have emerged in the ECI's latest data release..." he said.
The Congress leader added that the number of registered voters per Lok Sabha and the assembly constituencies included in that Lok Sabha constituency have not been published along with the turnout data by the ECI, as is usually done.
"The breakup of the number of votes and not just the vote percentage - as is typically made available by the ECI - is still not available," he said.
Asserting that the whole point of releasing such data is to make it comparable over time.
"The ECI's failure to release voter turnout data in the same format frustrates the very purpose of it all. One can only hope that political games are not being played through such data," he added.
More than 10 days after Phase 1 and four days after Phase 2 of polling for the ongoing general elections, the Election Commission of India (EC) released the final voter turnout figures for the two rounds on April 30. While Phase 1 saw a turnout of 66.14 per cent, for Phase 2, it was 66.7 per cent, a drop of just under 4 percentage points for the first phase and under 3 percentage points for the second phase compared to the 2019 elections.
On April 20, a day after the first phase of voting in 102 seats, the Commission had pegged voting at 65.5 per cent and on April 27, sources in EC had indicated a turnout of 66.7 per cent for the second phase comprising 88 seats.
However, the poll body did not release the total number of voters in each constituency. The Opposition parties, which had earlier in the day raised this issue majorly on social media platforms, pointed this out after the EC released the data.
The 102 seats of the first phase registered roughly 70 per cent turnout in 2019 and 83 of 88 seats that voted in phase two -- five seats in Assam went through delimitation and have, therefore, not been factored in the comparison--saw 69.64 per cent voting in the last Parliamentary polls.
The final turnout is a marginal upward revision of less than one percentage point from the provisional figures shared by the EC.