The Election Commission on Monday said 5.06 percent of votes cast in the last month’s federal and provincial assembly polls were declared invalid.

Kamal Bhattarai, undersecretary at the commission, said the highest 6.55 percent of ballots cast for proportional representation under provincial assembly polls turned out to be invalid.

He said the lowest 4.07 percent of votes cast for the first-past-the-post category of provincial polls were invalid.

Province-wise, the share of invalid votes stood highest at 5.70 percent in Sudurpashim and the lowest 4.16 percent in Bagmati province.

“The voter turnout was low than anticipated by the commission. The turnout was recorded at 61.41 percent with the highest turnout in Madhesh province at 65.77 percent and the lowest in Sudurpashim province at 57.80 percent,” said Bhattarai.

According to Bhattarai, 5.06 percent of votes cast under FPTP for the House of Representatives were invalidated, while 5.09 percent of the proportional representative votes for the lower house were announced invalid.

If the commission’s data is anything to go by, the percentage of invalid votes has come down significantly. In the parliamentary elections held in 2017, more than 14 percent of votes were invalid.

Invalid votes were as high as 13 percent in Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Chitwan Metropolitan City and Biratnagar Metropolitan City for the mayoral positions in the May 13 local polls while the overall invalid votes stood at three percent.