The election authorities are gearing up for counting the votes on June 4.
Elections were conducted for the 175 Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies in Andhra Pradesh on May 13.
As per the Election Commission of India (ECI) guidelines, the authorities are arranging 14 tables for each Assembly constituency and another set of 14 tables at the same counting centre for the respective Lok Sabha constituency.
“Initially, postal ballots will be counted, and later the votes polled in the EVMs will be taken up. The counting of postal ballots will start at 8 a.m. across the State,” Chief Electoral Officer Mukesh Kumar Meena said in a statement recently.
As per the ‘Handbook for Counting Agents’, published by the ECI, “After 30 minutes of commencement of postal ballot counting, the EVM counting can start and continue, irrespective of the stage of postal ballot counting. Once the EVM counting is completed, the VVPAT slip counting can also start.”
While the postal ballot papers will be counted by the Returning Officer at one table, the counting of votes in the EVMs will be taken up by the Assistant Returning Officers at the other tables provided in the counting hall.
For that purpose, the Control Units of EVMs received from the polling stations will be distributed across various counting tables, beginning with the Control Unit of EVM of Polling Station No. 1 at table No. 1, the Control Unit of EVM of Polling Station No.2 at table No.2 and so on.
A screenshot of the Control Unit, the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail and the Electronic Voting Machine taken from the ECI Hand Book for Counting Agents. | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT
At each counting table, votes cast at one polling station shall be taken up at a time. Thus, the counting of votes of as many polling stations as there are the number of counting tables will be simultaneously taken up in the first round of counting.
The counting will be done and completed in as many rounds as necessary, considering the number of counting tables and polling stations. The Control Units for the next round will not be brought onto the counting tables, unless the counting of the previous round is over.
At the time of counting, only the Control Unit of the EVM used at a particular Polling Station is required for ascertaining the result of poll at that polling station.
Once the EVM counting is completed, the VVPAT slips counting will start as per the prescribed procedure. Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected five polling stations per Assembly constituency and each Assembly segment of Parliamentary constituency.
M. Venu Gopal Reddy, P. Ranjit Basha, District Collectors of Guntur and Bapatla respectively, said that they made all arrangements for the counting.
