The voting percentage in Pipili bypoll was more than that in the 2019 and 2014 assembly elections (File)
Around 78.24 per cent of the 2.30 lakh voters of the Pipili assembly constituency in Odisha's Puri district have exercised their franchise during the September 30 bypoll, an official at the CEO's office said in Bhubaneswar on Friday.
The Chief Electoral Officer's (CEO) office had on Thursday said around 68.40 per cent voter turnout was recorded and an updated figure was released on Friday.
All arrangements have been made for counting of votes on Sunday, officials said.
The voting percentage in the bypoll was more than that in the 2019 and 2014 assembly elections. While the voter turnout in 2019 was 76.37 per cent, it was 77.27 per cent in 2014, sources in the CEO's office said.
Opposition BJP leader P Harichandan claimed that the high voter turnout was a clear indication that people wanted a change in Pipili where the BJD's Pradeep Maharathy got elected five times in a row since 2000.
BJD leaders, on the other hand, expressed confidence that they would retain the seat.
The winning margin in Pipili this time will be more than that of the 2019 elections, BJD vice-president Debiprasad Mishra claimed.
Senior Congress leader and MLA Suresh Routray said the party will get a respectable number of votes but will not win.
He claimed that the party which has spent more will win the Pipili seat and in terms of expenditure, the BJD is number one followed by the BJP.
Though there are 10 candidates in the fray at Pipili, the contest was mostly confined among the BJD's Rudrapratap Maharathy, the BJP's Ashrit Pattnaik and Congress nominee Biswokeshan Harichdan Mohapatra.
The by-election was necessitated following the death of BJD MLA Pradeep Maharathy in October last year.
The bypoll was first scheduled to be held on April 17 but it was countermanded after Congress candidate Ajit Mangaraj died of Covid-19 on April 14. Then it was slated for May 13 but was deferred due to a festival on that day and rescheduled on May 16. However, once again, it was postponed in the wake of the second wave of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the administration has geared up for the smooth and error-free counting of votes on Sunday, said Puri district Collector Samarth Verma.
Puri Superintendent Of Police KB Singh said, "While Border Security Force jawans have been deployed in the innermost cordon of the strong room, one platoon of State Armed Police has been deployed in the second layer. For the outer cordon at the warehouse, district police have been deployed.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)