Voters will elect 56 members to the Central Province, 50 members to the North Western Province and 36 members to the Northern Province. As many as 3,743 polling stations were set up in 54 constituencies.

A total of 4,363,252 registered voters from the three provinces were eligible to cast their votes. They include 1,889,557 from the Central Province, 719,477 from the Northern Province, and 1,754,218 from the North Western Province.

Postal voting was held Sep 13 and 14. As many as 111,383 voters were eligible to cast their votes by post.

As many as 476 counting centres were set up in the three provinces.

Vast swathes of the northern region were once strongholds of Tamil Tiger rebels, who fought against the army for a separate homeland as Sri Lanka was plunged into a civil war for 26 years. The rebels were defeated in May 2009.

The conflict left at least 100,000 people dead, but there are no confirmed figures for thousands of civilian deaths in the last months of battle. A UN investigation said it was possible that up to 40,000 people were killed at that time. The government puts the figure at 9,000, BBC reported.

In Saturday's polls, new transparent ballot boxes imported from India were introduced instead of the traditional wooden boxes in select polling centres.