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8:50 AM | Amid tight security, counting of votes for 17 Lok Sabha constituencies in Telangana today in 126 counting halls located at 35 places across the State.
As many as 443 candidates from various political parties and independents are in the fray in the polls that were held on April 11 in the first phase. The Electoral exercise was undertaken in 34,603 polling stations and 18,526 polling locations.
8:45 AM | Counting of votes for 38 Parliamentary segments and bypolls to 22 Assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu began amid tight security today. Trends are expected to emerge after about an hour.
The bypolls and Parliamentary elections are crucial for both the ruling AIADMK and main opposition DMK with the former looking to retain power in Tamil Nadu and the latter eyeing a comeback after consecutive poll setbacks.
Counting of votes is underway in 45 centres across the state, with over 17,000 polling staff and 45,000 police personnel on duty. As many as 1,520 personnel from the Central Armed Paramalitary Forces and over 38,000 from state police have been deployed on duty. A total of 88 counting observers are tasked to oversee the counting process.
8:40 AM | Counting of the postal ballot for the Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka for 28 constituencies shows that the BJP has taken an early lead in at least three constituencies while the Congress is ahead in two. Read more
8:30 AM| Kerala has been drawing an interest disproportionate to its size and profile in the Lok Sabha elections for three reasons: Rahul Gandhi, Sabarimala case and the fate of the CPI(M). Read more
8:00 AM | Counting of votes for the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections began on Thursday morning across the country. The counting exercise is on in over 4,000 counting centres amid concerns raised by opposition parties over alleged tampering of EVMs. They have asked the Election Commission to ensure transparency in counting.
Election Commission officials said results are expected only by late evening.
According to procedure, postal ballots would be the first to be counted. The number of service voters stands at 18 lakh and these include personnel of the armed forces, central police force personnel and state police personnel who are posted outside their constituencies. Diplomats and support staff posted in Indian embassies abroad are also counted as service voters.
Out of the 18 lakh registered voters, 16.49 lakh have sent their postal ballots to their respective returning officers as on May 17. The exercise of counting postal ballots manually will itself take a couple of hours at least, an EC official said.
7:30 AM | For the first time in Lok Sabha polls, the EC will tally vote count on Electronic Voting Machines with voter verified paper audit trail slips in five polling stations in each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency. It will effectively mean that out of nearly 10.3 lakh polling stations, the EVM-VVPAT matching will take place in 20,600 such stations.
In case of a mismatch, the results based on paper slip count will be considered as final.
The entire exercise of EVM-paper trail machine matching will take an additional four to five hours, EC officials said.
7:15 AM | The voting percentage of 67.11 this time was the highest ever-voter turnout in Indian parliamentary elections.
7 AM | Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the ground of excessive use of money power.
6:30 AM | The Union Home Ministry on Wednesday alerted all state chief secretaries and directors general of police about possibility of eruption of violence in different parts of the country during counting of votes. “This is in the wake of calls given and statements made in various quarters for inciting violence and causing disruption on the day of counting of votes,” a Home Ministry statement said.
It also asked states and UTs to take adequate measures for the security of strong rooms and venues of counting of votes.
6:00 AM | Counting for the 542 Lok Sabha seats in the general elections 2019 is set to begin from 8 am. For the first time, the voter-verifiable paper trail machines (VVPAT) counting has been introduced and the results are likely to get delayed by five to six hours due to paper trail verification.
The postal ballots would be counted first, followed by the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) counting. The VVPATs would be counted in the end. Nearly 39.6 lakh EVMs and 17.4 lakh VVPATs were used in 10.35 lakh polling stations across the country.
The elections were held in seven phases - April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12, and May 19. Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency
The Exit polls predicted a majority for BJP and its NDA alliance and a second term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Read the exit polls prediction here