BHUBANESWAR: The Election Commission (EC) has put in place all necessary arrangements for counting of votes for 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Odisha on Thursday.
Counting of votes for 21 Lok Sabha and 146 Assembly seats in the State, where elections were held in four phases, will take place at 63 centres. Declaration of the election results in Odisha may take more time due to simultaneous polls. Besides, postal ballots have increased this time to around one lakh from 31,326 in 2014.
Election officials said even if the exercise takes time, the focus will be on proper counting of votes. “All arrangements have been made by district Collectors and adequate security personnel deployed at counting centres. The counting exercise will begin at 8 am,” said Joint Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Raghuram Iyer.
As per EC guidelines, postal ballots will be counted first followed by EVM and VVPAT votes. The VVPAT votes in five booths of each constituency will be counted. Counting will be done on seven tables at every centre for each Lok Sabha and Assembly seats. Besides, there will be one table at each centre for postal ballots.
The average round of counting at each centre will be around 30. To reduce the number of rounds, the EC has granted additional 411 tables for the State. Around 6,700 officials have been engaged for the counting exercise. Sources said the focus of police will be on access control at the counting centres.