2 weeks Ago
Delhi Election Results Today: The Election Commission of India will begin counting votes for the Delhi Assembly elections at 8 AM today. The counting will be held across 19 counting centres across the national capital. The counting will decide the new government of the national capital.
Will Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) continue its dream run and script a hat-trick of victories, or will the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) return to power after a 27-year drought? The Delhi assembly has 70 seats. To form a government in the national capital, a party or alliance needs to win 36 seats. Here is how the counting process takes place: The Returning Officer (RO) is responsible for conducting the elections in a seat—parliament or assembly.
The RO is usually a government employee nominated by the Election Commission. The RO is also responsible for counting votes on the result day. The process of counting is videographed.
All 19 counting centres across the national capital today will be monitored using CCTV cameras . Nobody, other than counting staff, returning officers, security personnel, and agents of political parties is allowed inside the counting room until the process is over The rooms are locked before the counting begins at 8 am. The RO opens the locks in presence of Election Commission’s Special Observer .
After this, EVMs are taken out. The candidates of seats or their representatives are present. Vote counting begins with the postal ballots at 8 am.
This is mentioned in Rule 54A of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961. Votes in Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is taken up after half an hour 30. The EVM counting can also begin earlier if there's no postal ballot to be counted.
To begin with, the poll officials bring the EVM's control unit on the counting table. The paper seal on each control unit has to be intact. The RO also has to ensure that total votes polled match those mentioned in Form 17C, which is meant to be filled up by a government employee called the Presiding Officer on the day of polling.
After this, the RO matches the unique ID and seal on control units. Here too, candidates or their representatives are present. Once the button is pressed, the control unit of EVM will show the number of votes that each candidate got.
These numbers are written in Part II of Form 17C. But before that these numbers are shown to to the counting supervisor and polling agents of political parties. In case of any glitch in the display control unit, the VVPAT slips are used for counting.
The counting supervisor and polling agents of candidates are required to sign the Form 17C which has the candidate-wise result of each control unit. After this, it is sent to the RO and the final result sheet is compiled. VVPAT slips After this, VVPAT slips are taken up for counting.
Not all VVPAT ’s are counted. The rule says that counting officials must verify the VVPAT slips chosen randomly from five polling stations in each constituency. Remember, opposition had been demanding to count all VVPATs not just randomly from five polling stations.
The demand has been rejected by Supreme Court of India. Counting officials re-check all rejected ballots in case of discrepancy in victory margins before declaring the result. In case of a tie- when two top candidates for a seat get a same number of votes – a draw of lots is held to declare a winner.
As per the rule, the RO announces the result and hands over the victory certificate to the winning candidate. Once over, the EVMs are returned to the strong rooms where they are stored between polling and counting days. The EVMs are stored in the strong room for 45 days after the counting day is over.
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