With Supreme Court ordering counting of five VVPATs of every Assembly segments of the Lok Sabha constituency, the final results would be announced only in the evening.
Informing this at a press conference on Tuesday, Deputy Commissioner and Returning Officer M. Kanagavalli said that the announcement of the final results would get delayed as officials will have to count VVPATs also after counting EVMs.
She said that since mock polling in four EVMs were not cleared before the machines were used for actual voting, those four EVMs have been kept separately.
“Though mock polling in these EVMs were not cleared, 50 each VVPATs used in the mock polling have been removed already. Therefore, we will only count VVPATs of these four EVMs and not the mock votes registered in them,” Ms. Kanagavalli said.
She said that two election officials, who are senior IAS officers, would be monitoring the counting procedure. Each official would be in-charge of four Assembly segments as the district has eight Assembly constituencies. Of the total 17,95,931 voters, 11,09,390 have exercised their franchise. A total of 61.77 % voting was recorded.
Till Monday evening, 980 service votes and 2,436 postal ballets were received which will also be counted on the counting day.
She said that eight different coloured T-shirts have been prepared for polling officials to ensure that officials deployed for one Assembly segment do not go to any other segment.
“The officials deployed for counting of voters from a particular Assembly segment are not allowed to go to any other segment. To distinguish them, different coloured T-shirts have been given along with same colour passes which they have to wear and carry during the counting day,” Ms. Kanagavalli said.
Superintendent of Police Prakash Nikam, who was also present at the press conference, said that around 600 security personnel, including State police, paramilitary and BSF jawans, would be deployed on the Sainik School campus where counting would be held.
He said that prohibitory orders under Section 144 would be imposed in the district and liquor shops will remain closed till the end of counting on May 23.
