Election Commission confirms 67.4% vote in Lok Sabha election

Of the 8,026 candidates, 6,897 forfeited their deposits, with 345 of them belonging to the Bahujan Samaj Party, the national party with the highest number of forfeitures.

A voter gets her finger marked with indelible ink at a polling station during the seventh and last phase of Lok Sabha elections.

The 2019 Lok Sabha election, which concluded in May, saw 67.4% turnout. A total of 60,43,57,242 valid votes were polled on electronic voting machines (EVMs) and 2,196 votes were not retrieved from the EVMs, according to data released by the Election Commission on Friday.

The final figures show that 22,76,171 postal votes were valid. A total of 64,91,102 votes on the EVMs went to the None of the Above (NOTA); so did 22,253 postal ballots. There were 870 proxy votes.

Of the 8,026 candidates, 6,897 forfeited their deposits, with 345 of them belonging to the Bahujan Samaj Party, the national party with the highest number of forfeitures. The BJP, which won 303 seats, had 51 candidates who lost their deposits, while the Congress had 148.

In the 2019 election, the highest ever number of women were elected to the Lok Sabha, with 78 of the 724 candidates winning and 573 forfeiting their deposits.