April 11: Chief electoral officer Sunil Kumar Gupta today shied away from announcing provisional turnout data beyond 5pm - an hour short of the official closing time.

This is for the first time since Gupta assumed office six years ago and for the first time in recent memory that a Bengal chief electoral officer is not offering the provisional figures for the full polling duration.

A section of officials attributed the reluctance to roll out the numbers to the furore over the wide variations between the provisional and final figures on the April 4 turnout and allegations of ghost voting.

"On the basis of reports from returning officers and district election officers, as of 5pm, the turnout figure appears to be 84.71 per cent for West Midnapore, 78.87 for Bankura and 75.12 for Burdwan," Gupta said.

In another first, as soon as he finished rolling out the tentative turnout, Gupta and his team rushed out, refusing to take any question from the media on a polling day.

In the Lok Sabha polls of 2014 - marred by countless complaints for booth capture, booth jamming, proxy and false voting, violence, intimidation and other forms of electoral malpractice, allegedly by the ruling party - the final turnout (for these 31 constituencies) was 86.55 for West Midnapore, 84.39 for Bankura and 79.21 for Burdwan.

A political analyst said the turnout at 5pm suggested that the final figure was likely to touch the 2014 mark. If so, it will be difficult for the Election Commission to rebut allegations that it failed to weed out the ghost voters.

It remains to be seen whether 95-100 per cent voting took place in booths today, like on April 4.

Since this newspaper reported some discrepancies, the West Midnapore district administration has been trying to attribute the dubiously high turnout in some booths - like the 100 per cent turnout in Binpur's Laljol Primary School, now revised to 89.43 and that of Gopiballavpur's Telkand Primary School, revised to 89 - to "human error".

Reactions to the day's proceedings, however, were mixed. Although most of the Opposition parties today alleged that ghost voting went on unabated in parts of West Midnapore and Bankura, there was no demand for repoll till late this evening, which suggested that they were not too unhappy.

Sources in the CPM said that they were bullish about the party's performance in the Burdwan industrial belt and party state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra would win from West Midnapore's Narayangarh though the CPM was trailing by over 26,000 votes in the constituency in the last Lok Sabha polls.

Trinamul sources, however, said that they would get around 25 to 26 seats in this phase and Mishra would lose by at least 15,000 votes.

"If the CPM starts admitting now that Mishra would lose, they won't get people to carry out the poll process till the last phase. They are just trying to put up a brave face, they themselves know that they would do badly," said Trinamul secretary-general Partha Chatterjee.

Gupta and his office achieved another milestone today by receiving 1,878 complaints between 7am and 7pm - 1,810 of which had been "disposed of" by 8pm, according to the 1987 batch IAS officer.

Although Gupta and his team could not collate poll percentage from 8,463 booths where polls were held today, it wasted little time in disposing of 96 per cent of the complaints.

"The number of complaints itself is a record. But a greater record is the disposal rate. If 1,810 complaints were disposed of in 13 hours, Gupta and his team disposed of over two complaints every minute. How many seconds then did they spend addressing each complaint?" asked Congress state vice-president Debabrata Basu.

Gupta listed a litany of "nils" to suggest that the polls were free and fair.

"Barring some minor incidents unrelated to the polling process outside booths, the number of poll boycotts, nil, the number of poll-related arrests, nil, interruption or obstruction of polling, nil, booth capturing, nil, vitiation of polls, nil, unlawful voting, nil, serious complaints from political parties, nil, breach of law and order in booths, nil, poll-related death, nil," the chief electoral officer said.

CPM state secretariat member Rabin Deb, who has been dealing with Gupta and his office for six years on behalf of the Left Front, said he was not surprised with the reaction.

"Even if there is a genocide by the ruling party, committed on the polling day, during poll hours, but at a safe distance from a booth, the chief electoral officer will roll out his long list of nils to say the elections were free, fair and peaceful barring a few minor incidents unrelated to the polls," he said.

Other political parties - barring the ruling Trinamul - have been levelling similar allegations through the poll season against the senior IAS officer, set to return to a full-time Bengal government posting after the elections.

"The role played by Gupta and his office throughout this election process has been extremely suspicious. We have already complained to the Nirvachan Sadan," said BJP state vice- president Asim Sarkar.