Tuesday is not going to be anything short of a thriller for Delhiites with the final results of the assembly polls being declared after a short but aggressive campaigning by all the political parties.
Counting of votes would begin at 8 am on Tuesday and final results are likely to become clear by 1 pm.
The atmosphere at the Kashmere Gate headquarter of the Delhi Electoral Office on Sunday was, however, languid with officials taking in a brief breather even as preparations for the counting is already underway.
On Tuesday, the counting process would begin at 8 am at 14 different counting centres spread across the city. The counting of data stored in the 20,000 EVMs, which were deployed at 12,177 polling stations, however, would start only after 8.30 am.
“Counting of postal ballots would begin first at separate tables and the counting of data from EVM control units would only begin at 8.30 am,” said Delhi’s joint chief electoral officer, Rajesh Goyal.
“There would be about 10 to 14 different tables for each assembly constituency at the counting centres with one micro observer assigned to each table. There would also be observers monitoring the process at all centres,” he said.
The electoral officials would retrieve data regarding votes polled for each candidate one by one and show the result to all polling agents of political parties present at the counting centre. Votes are counted in different rounds, usually 10, that are noted and put up on a display board. It takes about 15 minutes for the whole process for each control unit.
There were about 16,000 control units that were deployed on polling day. The whole process would also be videographed at all the centres.
Goyal said that by about 1 pm, the final results would become clear even though the final announcement might take a little more time.
The 20,000 EVMs and 16,000 control units have already been shifted to strong rooms in their respective counting centres and kept under 24X7 CCTV camera surveillance and guarded by a three-tier security cordon. While personnel of central armed police forces would form the inner cordon, the next cordon is that of state armed police and the third one formed by Delhi Police personnel.
