Paper slips of VVPATs will be counted last: Election Commission

NEW DELHI: Election Commission officials on Sunday said counting on May 23 will be taken up first for postal ballots, while paper slips of five VVPATs per assembly segment in every parliamentary constituency, as directed by the Supreme Court, will be counted last.
According to the order of counting elaborated by deputy election commissioner Sudeep Jain, the first trends will be available from counting of electronically transmitted postal ballots returned by service voters by speed post. The EVM rounds will be taken up next. Where the result cannot be retrieved from the EVM control unit due to it not getting switched on or its display not working, the corresponding VVPAT attached to the EVM ballot unit will be kept aside for counting.
Where it is found that the presiding officer did not erase the mock poll data from the EVM preceding actual poll, the VVPAT slips will be counted and the number of mock poll slips deducted from the total tally to arrive at the result. Only after the EVM rounds are over will VVPAT counting be taken up. First, the VVPAT trail for EVM control units from which results could not be retrieved will be counted. Thereafter, wherever a candidate has requested matching of EVM count and paper trail under Rule 56 D, the returning officer will examine the same and pass an order. In case the request is granted, the counting of paper slips for the said VVPAT will be taken up next.
Only after that will mandatory counting of VVPAT slips for five polling stations per assembly segment be taken up, Jain said. Sources said it takes an average 60 minutes to count slips from one VVPAT.
According to an official, 538 parliamentary constituencies have 4,120 assembly segments and five have no segments. So, on an average there are seven segments in every parliamentary constituency. “Five polling stations will have to be picked for VVPAT matching. So, it will be 35 per parliamentary constituency,” he said.