Sri Lanka’s presidential poll ended on Thursday without any major incidents in the island.

“No major violence, no violations and it was a peaceful election,” Election Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya told newsmen at a press conference held immediately after the elections were over on Thursday.

Answering a question, he said no harassment of voters coming to the booths were reported. He allayed fears of journalists that the ballot boxes could be changed. He stressed that the security was so tight that no one could do such a violation.

He also pointed out that the operations at the polling booths were smooth and no polling booth would be annulled on grounds of violations. “The election department received a total of 312 complaints from the public. They were trivial by nature seeking clarification on voting systems,” he added.

Around 75 percent of the 15 million registered voters turned out at the Seventh Presidential poll which concluded here on Thursday. A 70 percent turnout was reported in Kalutara, 75 percent in Matale, 70 percent in Kegalle, 75 percent in Kurunegala and 76 percent in Anuradhapura. The voter turnout in Vavuniya was reported as 66 percent and 68 percent in Mannar while it was 75 percent in Kandy and 72 percent in Trincomalee. Following are the turnouts in some of the districts: 76 percent in Matara, 70 percent in Hambantota, 80 percent in Nuwara Eliya, 70 percent in Puttalam, 75 percent in Moneragala, 75 percent in Polonnaruwa, 70 percent in Kegalle, 65 percent in Gampaha and 79 percent in Galle.

The polling, which began at 7 a.m. ended at 4 p.m. and the counting of votes would begin at 9 p.m. on the same day. The final results of the poll are expected to be released by the Election Commissioner by 9 p.m. on Friday.

A total of 12,324 polling booths were set up throughout the island for the convenience of the voters. More than 3,000 government servants were on election duty in addition to the 71,100 security personnel including 5,000 special task forces officers.

Prior to the poll, the independent Center for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) Coordinating Secretary D.M. Dissanayake said it had documented 420 incidents of election violence with 237 categorized as major incidents while 183 as minor incidents.

He said the highest number of major incidents was reported from Jaffna District with 22 incidents followed by Badulla, Kurunegala and Kandy with 19, 18 and 17 incidents respectively. Dissanayake said CMEV had recorded 26 incidents involving firearms and 3 incidents of petrol bombings.

On account of the polls, express highways in Sri Lanka were made toll free to facilitate voters’ travel.