73 percent polling in Tamil Nadu's Pudukottai by-poll (Third Lead)

Chennai, June 12 (IANS) The by-election for the Pudukottai assembly constituency of Tamil Nadu ended peacefully at 5 p.m Tuesday with around 73 percent of the over 190,000 voters turning up to cast their ballots, said an official.

"The final vote percentage may be around 74 percent but this will be known only after making the final tally," an election commission official told IANS.

According to poll officials, voting was peaceful in all the 224 polling booths in the constituency.

Officials said voting began at 8 a.m. and was peaceful with no untoward incident being reported from any of the polling booths.

The by-election in Pudukottai, 350 km from here, was necessitated following the death of Communist Party of India (CPI) legislator S.P. Muthukumaran in a road accident in April.

It was a straight fight between the ruling AIADMK and the DMDK, with the DMK and others boycotting the polls.

The DMK had alleged that the opposition parties will not get justice from the election commission, while the CPI decided not to contest considering its practical weakness in facing the by-poll.

The two major choices before the Pudukottai voters were the ruling AIADMK candidate Karthik Thondaiman and the opposition party DMDK's N. Jahir Hussain.

In the 235-member Tamil Nadu assembly, the AIADMK currently has 150 members (including the speaker) followed by the DMDK's 29, the DMK's 23,the Communist Party of India-Marxist's 10, the CPI's eight, the Congress's five and the PMK's three, among others.

Counting of votes will be on June 15.