Counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha election will begin at 8 a.m. on May 23.
This time, the official declaration of results was likely to be out only by May 23 evening as the counting process would take 9 to 10 hours to complete, Chief Electoral Officer Teeka Ram Meena said on Saturday. The Election Commission (EC) has arranged 140 counting centres in 29 counting locations in the State.
Postal ballots will be counted first. Service votes polled through the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS) will be scanned simultaneously. All postal ballots received till 8 a.m. on the counting day will be admissible for counting.
The commission has arranged a maximum of 14 counting tables each in every centre, but more will be allotted, if needed. For counting postal ballots, five tables will be used. If the victory margin is less than the total number of postal ballots, the latter will be re-counted, Mr. Meena said.
The Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) will be taken up for counting after ensuring that the pink paper seal, outer paper seal, special tag and green paper seal on the control units are intact. The paper slips in the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT) will be counted after the EVMs. As per the EC decision, paper slips in five VVPAT machines, selected by lot, will be counted in each Assembly segment. VVPAT slips will also be counted if the control unit display is damaged or if the candidate, election agent or counting agent requests it and the Returning Officer is convinced of its necessity.
After every round of counting, details will be uploaded on the EC’s Suvidha portal before the next round starts. The votes in the EVMs alone will take, on an average, four hours to complete. The VVPAT machines will not be counted simultaneously, but one after the other, Mr. Meena said.
‘‘If the EVM result does not tally with the VVPAT slip numbers, the result as per the VVPAT slips will prevail,’’ he said. Separate counting booths will be arranged for counting these paper slips.
Three-tier security
On Saturday, the CEO held discussions with top police officials regarding the security arrangements for counting day. There will be a three-tier security system, where the local police will be posted within a radius of 100 metres, the armed police on the campus of the centre, and the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) at the gates.