Counting in Ghaziabad may go on till midnight

GHAZIABAD: Counting of votes in Ghaziabad may go on till the midnight of May 23 and the delay could be attributed to counting of voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips in around 50 booths, officials said.


“It takes anything between 45 minutes and one hour to manually count the VVPAT slips and according to the Supreme Court direction, five booths per assembly constituency were randomly chosen to use them,” said Ritu Maheshwari, district magistrate, Ghaziabad.

“Apart from that, counting of VVPAT slips would be done at five booths — three in Muradnagar and two in Loni — as polling officers in the booths forgot to reset the EVMs on April 11, the election day,” added Maheshwari.

Counting of votes through EVMs will be taken up first. After that, the postal ballots would be counted. “Electronically transmitted postal ballot papers (ETPB) are distributed among electors and returned by post in this system,” said Maheshwari.

The results of each round of counting would be uploaded on the ECI website. “Results could also be viewed on ECI’s Suvidha mobile app,” said Maheshwari. “In case of faults with EVMs, we will resort to the VVPAT counting method.”

A three-tier security system would be in place at Govindpuram where counting will take place from 8am on May 23. “We will deploy about 1,400 police personnel in and around the counting centre, including 1,068 constables and head constables and 36 inspectors,” said Upender Agarwal, SSP, Ghaziabad. “Anyone entering the counting centre will be thoroughly frisked,” Agarwal added.