Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Gopal Krishna Dwivedi has pegged the number of staff required for counting votes on May 23 at about 21,000 and said the places of their deployment will be kept as a secret till the last minute.
Randomisation of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) would be done twice after the completion of staff identification, he told the media persons who met him at the Secretariat on Thursday.
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) of five EVMs would be counted in every Lok Sabha (LS) and Assembly constituency as per the Supreme Court directions, he stated. The counting of votes would started with postal and service ballots and 15 tables per LS and Assembly constituencies were being provided.
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Micro-observers
There would be micro-observers and counting supervisors and assistants for all the tables.
Proposals for increasing the number of tables came from Kurnool, Visakhapatnam and West Godavari districts, the CEO said.
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Mr. Dwivedi said the Election Commission of India had not yet given its clearance for re-polling in five booths (two each in Guntur and Nellore districts and one in Prakasam) where violent incidents took place and people struggled to cast their vote due to defective EVMs.