Updates on the go: Digital displays at 25 spots to give vote-count information

NEW DELHI: The Delhi election office is all set for the counting D-Day. To give regular updates to common people on the seven parliamentary seats in the capital, it has put up digital displays at 25 locations.
While most boards have been installed at the offices of New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and the three corporations, the updates will also be available at Connaught Place and Khan Market. All 17 floors of the NDMC office at Parliament Street and its main gate, the ground floor of Civic Centre where south and north corporations have their offices, the reception of the main building of East Delhi Municipal Corporation at Patparganj Industrial Estate and the main gate of the office of the Delhi chief electoral officer at Kashmere Gate will have the displays.

“These screens will display Delhi-specific results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. A scroll will run at the bottom of the screen displaying the national results,” said an official. “The results can also be accessed through the website of Election Commission of India (https://results.eci.gov.in) and the updates will be available on ECI’s mobile application, Voter Helpline, which can be downloaded from the play store.”
A total of 164 candidates are in the fray in Delhi. Out of over 1.43 crore registered voters, about 86.6 lakh (60.52%) exercised their franchise on May 12.
The counting will begin at 8am and may continue till late evening as poll officials will also have to match the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) from 50 randomly selected polling stations in each of the seven constituencies. The matching of VVPAT at the 350 stations will take place in a small enclosure, covered with iron mesh from all sides, to ensure the security of the slips, said an official. “The process will take some time,” said an official.
There will be three-layered security at each of the seven counting centres, which have been made “no-mobile phone zones”.
East Delhi constituency’s returning officer, K Mahesh, said elaborate arrangements had been made at the sports complex of Commonwealth Games Village near Akshardham. “We have made 10 partitions in a big hall where simultaneous counting of votes from all 10 assembly segments will be carried out. The staff posted for each segment has been given separate-colour T-shirts to wear and will have to follow colour footprints from the strong rooms to the counting area,” he said.
The staff wearing a particular colour will follow the footprints of that colour while carrying the EVMs to ensure that the machines don’t get mixed up, Mahesh added.