Poll panel gets ready for D-Day

The Election Commission (EC) has made all preparations for the successful conclusion of the election of the members of 16th Lok Sabha. The counting of votes on all 543 seats would start at 8 am on Friday and by noon it would be clear who forms the next government.

Nearly, 550 million votes logged in more than 1.8 million electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be unveiled by a mammoth team of EC in presence of representatives of the political parties. EC officials will start working early in the morning and will be able to come out with a ‘trend’ in the first half. A senior EC official said, ‘We will start the counting in 989 centres at 8 am. First postal ballots will undergo the counting process and then it will be followed by the EVMs.’

When asked at what time the counting will be over, he said, ‘We are hopeful that it will be over by 6 pm. However, trends will be clear by noon which party is going to form the next government.’ Most of the counting centres are in close proximity to EVM store rooms and have been already taken under control by additional central paramilitary forces. ‘We are fully prepared and we have already issued instructions to all the returning officers for the smooth execution of the whole process. They were asked not to allow any unauthorised person close to the counting centre,’ he said.

It was learnt that most of the counting centres will have broadband connectivity for seamless flow of trends after each round of counting to an EC control room at Nirvachan Bhawan in New Delhi. 

Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath claimed that they are fully prepared and each counting table will have a micro observer to monitor the counting process and after every round the result sheet will be provided to the candidates.