The near-final count of votes polled on Monday in the 18 Chhattisgarh Assembly constituencies showed the turnout increasing to 76.28 per cent.

On Monday, chief electoral officer Subrat Sahoo had pegged the preliminary figure at 60.49 per cent. In New Delhi, the Election Commission had said it would rise to 70 per cent by the time all polling parties returned to the respective district headquarters.

On Tuesday, Sahoo said the turnout in these seats in the 2013 Assembly polls was 75.93 per cent, which suggests an increase of 0.35 per cent this year in spite of a boycott call by Maoists.

Sahoo clarified that seven polling teams were yet to return to the district headquarters and were safe in police camps.

Asked about the delay in issuing the final figures, Sahoo told a media conference in Raipur: “What we are telling you is officially authenticated figures, not hearsay.”

“The biggest rise (in turnout) was seen in interior areas. General (other) areas are slightly less. Women’s turnout was higher than men’s… by about 1 per cent.”

The highest turnout was at Dongargaon in Rajnandgaon district at 85.15 per cent, and the lowest in Bijapur at 47.35 per cent. Seats like

Jagdalpur and Konta, usually in the news for Maoist insurgency, saw an increase of 5 to 7 per cent.

Bijapur, which witnessed a skirmish between the CRPF and the Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army on Tuesday, saw an increase of more than 2 per cent over that in 2013.

The Maoist-influenced Dantewada, however, saw almost a 2 per cent drop to 60.62 per cent.

In Delhi, deputy election commissioner Umesh Sinha told The Telegraph: “Some of the polling parties had to move to safe locations, one CRPF camp after the other, before being flown by helicopter to the districts headquarters. They can’t move in darkness. Helicopters don’t fly at night. Even late last night, there were long queues of polling officials at the dispatch centres where they record the tallies, that’s why the initial figure was low.”