Chennai, Apr 21 (Reporter) Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo has pegged the overall voting percentage in April 19 Lok Sabha polls to 39 seats in the State to 69.46 per cent. Mr Sahoo had on Friday told reporters that the provisional voting figure as on 7.00 pm that day was 72.47 per cent. He also said there might be variations as data was being collected from all the polling booths. At a time when it was expected that the percentage might go up beyond 72.47 per cent and touch the highest turnout in 40 years, it dropped by nearly per cent. He said as per the provisional figures, 72.09 per cent of voters have voted as per the details available till 1900 hrs and a final figure will be known by Saturday afternoon after compilation of details from all the 68,321 polling booths in 39 Lok Sabha Constituencies, as the electorate turned up late to cast their ballots due to the searing heat. In several booths, a large number of people were seen standing in queue even after the polling ended at 1800 hrs. All of them, who had entered the booths before that time, were issued tokens to enable them to cast their vote. If this trend continued, Tamil Nadu is all set to create history by recording the highest turnout in 40 years, which will be an all time high in the electoral politics of the State. The previous highest turnout was recorded in 1984 when 73.09 per cent of the total 3.09 crore voters then had cast their ballots during the legendary and AIADMK founder MGR regime, which had allied with the Congress. However, Mr Sahoo had on Saturday evening pegged the overall voting percentage at 69.46% in line with the post-midnight figures released by the Election Commission of India, which was nearly three per cent less as against 72.47 per cent turnout recorded in 2019 LS polls. Mr Sahoo said after the data received from all the booths were fed into the computer, the overall percentage came down to 69.46% as against 72.09 per cent announced earlier. He said for the second year Dharmapuri registered the highest turnout of 81.48% (82. 47 in 2019) and Chennai Central, the lowest at 53.91%. Meanwhile, tight security were provided in all the 43 counting Centres in Tamil Nadu, including three in Chennai--Anna University, Queen Mary's College and the Loyola College. The counting of votes will be taken up on June four and the fate of 950 candidates would be known that day...////...