Lucknow. With the completion of voting in the last phase of Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission has started preparing for the counting of votes. Counting of votes for all 80 Lok Sabha seats of the state will begin at 8 am on Tuesday, clear trends will start coming in from the afternoon and results will start coming in by evening.

On the basis of the number of polling booths, Kanpur's result is expected to come first and Ghaziabad's result is expected to come last. A total of 81 centers have been set up for counting of votes in all 75 districts of the state. A total of 851 candidates are in the fray for the 80 Lok Sabha seats of the state, of which 771 are men and 80 are women. The maximum number of 28 candidates are in Ghosi and the minimum number of 4 candidates are in Kaiserganj Lok Sabha constituency.

Three-tier security arrangements for counting

Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said that a three-tier security arrangement has been made for the counting of votes. The first level of security will be at a radius of 100 meters from the counting place, where the regional police force will be deployed. The second level of security will be at the gate of the counting place and at the third level, the Central Security Force personnel will monitor the counting hall.

Surveillance will be done through CCTV

The counting of votes and sealing process will be done under CCTV surveillance. He told that 179 observers have been deployed for counting of votes. 80 Returning Officers and 1581 Assistant Returning Officers have been deployed for counting of votes of 80 Lok Sabha constituencies. Whereas, counting of votes of Dadraul, Lucknow East, Gainsadi and Duddhi assembly by-constituencies will be completed by four Returning Officers and 26 Assistant Returning Officers. Counting of votes will be done assembly constituency wise and the results will be declared after adding up the votes of all the assembly constituencies.

At the same time, the counting of postal ballots will be done at the counting centre of the RO headquarters. Scanning of postal ballots and ETPBS received from service voters will start at 8 am. A black or white board will be arranged in each counting hall, on which the name of the candidate and the phase-wise result will be written. Media and common people can visit result.eci.gov.in to get information about trends and results.

VVPAT slips of five polling booths of each assembly constituency will be counted

The Chief Electoral Officer informed that under the counting to be done assembly wise, five polling stations of each assembly will be drawn on the basis of draw and the VVPAT slips of those polling booths will be counted. He also clarified that if the result is not declared from a booth due to the display of the Control Unit (CU) related to it not being visible, then after counting of all such EVMs, the result will be taken from the VVPAT slip of that booth. Apart from this, if the mock poll votes have not been removed from the control unit of any booth, then the counting of votes of that control unit will not be done.

If after the entire counting of votes, the difference between victory and defeat is more than the votes cast at that booth, then the result will be declared without counting that booth. If the difference is less than the votes cast at that booth, then the votes mentioned in the mock poll certificate will be removed and the counting will be done from the slips of VVPAT and the result will be declared on that basis.

There will be arrangement for the counting agent to sit on each table

There will be arrangement for the counting agent to sit at each table in the counting hall. After the control unit (CU) arrives on the table, the CU number will be shown by the counting supervisor, which will make it clear that the CU belongs to the same booth. The votes mentioned in 17C Part-1 along with the CU will be told to the agents.

After this, the CU will be turned on and the counting result will be recorded on 17C Part-2 for each candidate. If any agent requests to show the result again, the supervisor will show the result again. After the signature of the supervisor and counting agent on 17C Part-2, one copy will be taken for feeding and the photocopy of the other copy will be given to the counting agent.

Other points

- Counting of votes will take place at two centres each in Agra, Meerut, Azamgarh, Deoria, Sitapur and Kushinagar districts.

- Counting of votes of eight Lok Sabha constituencies will be done in three districts, counting of votes of 37 Lok Sabha constituencies will be done in two districts and counting of votes of 35 districts will be done in one district.

- Since there are more polling stations (1127) in Sahibabad Assembly constituency of Ghaziabad Lok Sabha constituency, counting will be done in maximum 41 rounds here.