Stage set for counting of votes in Telangana

Hyderabad, Dec 2 (IANS) The stage is set for the counting of votes polled in the November 30 Telangana Assembly elections, on Sunday.

Elaborate arrangements have been made for the counting which will be taken up on Sunday in all the centres.

Chief Electoral Officer Vikas Raj said that the counting will begin at 8 a.m. at 49 counting centres for all 119 Assembly constituencies. Police have imposed prohibitory order around the centres and stepped-up security to maintain law and order.

Postal ballots will be taken up for counting at 8 a.m. and half an hour later Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will be opened.

"If postal ballot counting takes time, it will go on parallelly with the counting of votes on EVMs," the CEO said.

He said after the polling concluded on Thursday night, all EVMS reached destinations. They were sealed and put under CCTV cameras and central force security in the presence of candidates or their representatives.

Every counting centre has two cordons of security. While the inner layer of security is being handled by the central forces the second layer is being taken care of by state armed reserve.

On the counting day, a third layer will be added with the state police force controlling the traffic around the centres.

A total of 40 companies Central Armed Police Forces have been deployed for guarding the strong rooms and for security during the counting, he said.

The CCTV footage of strong rooms is being shown to candidates or their representatives. The counting centres have a total of 1,766 counting tables.

There are 131 tables for returning officers and postal ballots.

Since there are more postal ballots than in the previous election and polling percentage was high in some constituencies and most of the constituencies have high number of candidates, it may take time to complete the entire process in every round of counting.

While there will be 14 counting tables each for counting the votes of every constituency, six constituencies having more than 500 polling stations will have 28 tables each.

Each table will have one counting supervisor, one micro-observer and two counting assistants.

According to the Election Commission, 71.34 per cent polling was recorded in the elections held on Thursday. This is about two per cent lower than the turnout in 2018 elections. Out of a total 3,26,02,793 voters, 2,32,59,256 cast their votes.