A day after Assembly polls, the control room at the CEO’s office was a beehive of activity on Saturday. Their job is to collect precise poll figures, total number of voters, number of persons voted, break up of male, female and third gender votes from each constituency and upload them on the CEO dashboard.
After the tentative voter turnout was put at around 67-69% at the end of polling on Friday, the exercise began to determine the actual percentage as polling continued till late into the night in districts like Adilabad. Voters who entered the polling stations before the closing time of 5 p.m. were allowed to vote as per Election Commission guidelines.
Swinging into action
But even at 7 p.m. on Saturday, 26 hours after the poll ended, figures were still trickling in. Concerned over the delay in uploading the latest figures, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Rajat Kumar swung into action. He called up the Returning Officers (RO) of 13 Assembly Constituencies, half of them in Hyderabad, to submit figures immediately.
Explaining the elaborate after-poll process to The Hindu , he says: “Winding up of polling process is an important aspect with the scrutiny of reports submitted by the presiding officers in every polling station by the RO in the presence of external observer and agents of political parties. Only after the observer certifies that the polling has been held without glitches and malpractice, the RO gives the final report. The scrutiny is important to determine whether there is any need for re-poll.”
Most of the polling personnel were on the job for the last 36 hours since Friday morning.
Post-poll process
After polling is completed, EVMS, VVPATs and other polling material, used and unused from every polling station in the constituency are handed over to the collection centre, and the EVMS have to be kept in the strong rooms in the presence of the observer.
The process should be videographed and a seal has to be put. The process was completed at 3.40 a.m on Saturday, he said.
After that, the scrutiny of presiding officer’s diary is taken up and he has to give a handwritten report on 19 items including the voter turnout which has to be read, corroborated and checked with the observer and RO. The scrutiny report then is sent to the CEO’s office in Form 21.
Given the volume of work, it is not unusual to submit the report by 7 p.m. the following day. There should be no compromise on the quality of the work as it will interfere with the integrity of the polls, he said.
