Decision Day: LS vote count, results today

JAMMU: The counting of votes for the seven-phase elections to India's lower house of parliament, the world's biggest democratic exercise, will take place on Thursday, bringing the curtains down on a bitterly-fought contest which the country rarely witnessed.
Most of the exit polls have predicted that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is on course to retain power for a second term, riding on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma like the way he swept to power in 2014.
However, the opposition parties have trashed results of the exit polls, claiming that the BJP will suffer severe drubbing due to rising unemployment, farm distress and slowdown in the economy.
Election Commission officials said the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections will begin at 8.00 am Thursday and results are expected only by late evening.
A day before counting of votes for the Lok Sabha polls, the Union Home Ministry Wednesday alerted all states and Union Territories on the possibility of violence in different parts of the country, saying calls were given in various quarters for inciting violence.
Elaborate arrangements have been made by Election Commission officials in Jammu and Kashmir to ensure peaceful counting of votes for the six Lok Sabha seats in the state tomorrow.
Election officials said 10 counting centres have been set up for the counting process.
Officials said a three-tier security ring would protect and secure each counting centre to ensure a free, fair and peaceful counting process.
Lok Sabha constituencies of Jammu, Udhampur, Anantnag, Srinagar and Baramulla would have one counting centre each while for the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat two counting centres are being set up, one in Leh and the other in Kargil town.
Three counting centres have been set up for counting of migrant votes in Delhi, Jammu and Udhampur.
Officials said there would 90 counting halls in total and 896 counting tables in these halls.
To ensure there is no untoward incident around the counting halls, prohibitory restrictions under section 144 CrPc will remain in force around each counting centre from the beginning till the end of the counting process, officials said.
General observers would monitor the counting process and they will be assisted by micro observers.
In the Jammu region, the contest is mainly between Jugal Kishore Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Raman Bhalla of the Congress. In Udhampur the main contest is between BJP candidate and Union Minister Jitendra Singh and Vikramaditya Singh of the Congress.
In the Valley, National Conference (NC) President and four-time Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah faces Aga Mohsin of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Irfan Raza Ansari of the Peoples Conference (PC) and Khalid Jahangir of the BJP.
In Baramulla Lok Sabha seat the main contest is between Muhammad Akbar Lone of the NC and Raja Aijaz Ali of the PC.
In Anantnag, the contest is three-cornered between former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP, G.A. Mir of the Congress and Justice (Retired) Hasnain Masoodi of the NC.
In the Ladakh constituency the main contest is between Rigzin Spalbar of the Congress and Jamyang Tsering Namgyal of the BJP. There are two powerful independent candidates also in the fray there - Haji Asgar Ali Karbalai and Sajjad Hussain.
All the six results from J&K are expected by tomorrow afternoon.
For the first time in Lok Sabha polls, the EC will tally vote count on Electronic Voting Machines with voter verified paper audit trail slips in five polling stations in each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency.
It will effectively mean that out of nearly 10.3 lakh polling stations, the EVM-VVPAT matching will take place in 20,600 such stations.
In case of a mismatch, the results based on paper slip count will be considered as final.
The entire exercise of EVM-paper trail machine matching will take an additional four to five hours, EC officials said.
EC officials said the voting percentage of 67.11 this time was the highest ever-voter turnout in Indian parliamentary elections.
They said as per procedure, postal ballots would be the first to be counted.
The number of service voters stands at 18 lakh and these include personnel of the armed forces, central police force personnel and state police personnel who are posted outside their constituencies.
Diplomats and support staff posted in Indian embassies abroad are also counted as service voters.
Out of the 18 lakh registered voters, 16.49 lakh have sent their postal ballots to their respective returning officers as on May 17.
The exercise of counting postal ballots manually will itself take a couple of hours at least, an EC official said.
Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the ground of excessive use of money power.
The voting was staggered between April 11 and May 19 in which around 67 per cent of the nearly 900 million eligible people exercised their franchise to elect 542 members of the Lok Sabha from a total of 8,049 contestants.
In the 2014 elections, the BJP won 282 seats while the Congress had suffered a severe drubbing getting an all-time low of 44 seats as against 206 it won in 2009.
Union Minister and BJP ally Ram Vilas Paswan on Wednesday exuded confidence of BJP sweeping the elections.
“The ‘impending victory of the NDA’ in the Lok Sabha polls is due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He alone should get credit of this victory since the entire election revolved around him, debate on inflation or corruption did not matter," Paswan said.
At Congress headquarters in New Delhi, party functionaries made arrangements for media interactions on Thursday as the trends start pouring in.
Despite the exit polls largely giving majority to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the party workers and office-bearers of the Congress looked confident on Wednesday.
A senior office-bearer of the Congress told: "The spokespersons of the party will arrive at the party office at 8.30 a.m. However, the senior leaders of the party will reach in the afternoon."
Asked if the party had ordered sweets in case the results go its way, he said, "The Congress had never ordered sweets in the past. This time too, we won't order sweets."
However, Rajasthan Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot said the party will accept the Lok Sabha election results with "humility", but maintained that exit poll projections have been wrong several times.
"Prediction by exit polls have gone wrong several times. Good results (for the Congress) will come out tomorrow. We believe that the results will be in our favour. Whatever the results, we will accept them with humility," Gehlot said.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission Wednesday rejected the demand of 22 political parties to count paper trail machine slips before the counting of votes polled in electronic voting machines (EVMs), saying it has not been found "feasible".
A day after a delegation met the EC, it issued a statement, saying after two rounds of in-depth discussions Wednesday and Thursday,"it has neither been found possible nor feasible to accede to this demand" in the overall context and especially in view of a Supreme Court judgment of April 8 which had directed the poll panel that the random selection of VVPATs will be subject to the process of slip verification as per the EVM guideline in force.
The guideline broadly states that the slip count should be held at the end of counting of votes polled in EVMs.
Ahead of counting of votes for the Lok Sabha election, opposition parties Wednesday slammed the EC for rejecting their demand to tweak the counting of voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips, with the Congress calling it an "Enfeebled Commission" while BJP president Amit Shah terming their plea as "unconstitutional".
"There were some other procedural issues like allowing counting agents of candidates along with all returning officers and assistant returning officers on which necessary instructions have already been reiterated and wherever required made more candidate-friendly," the EC said in a statement.
The opposition parties, which had approached the EC on Tuesday, wanted five random VVPATs to be counted first so that if there is a problem or a mismatch, the entire VVPAT slips can be counted at the beginning itself.
Though the EC had made it clear to the parties on Tuesday that the old protocol would continue, its top officials met Wednesday and decided to continue with counting the slips at the end.
Meanwhile, a day before counting of votes for the Lok Sabha polls, the Union Home Ministry Wednesday alerted all states and Union Territories on the possibility of violence in different parts of the country, saying calls were given in various quarters for inciting violence.
In a statement, the ministry also said it has asked the states and UTs to maintain law and order, peace and public tranquillity.
"The home ministry has alerted the state chief secretaries and directors general of police regarding possibility of eruption of violence in different parts of the country in connection with the counting of votes tomorrow," the statement said.
The ministry said the states and UTs have been further asked to take adequate measures for the security of strong rooms and venues of counting of votes.
"This is in the wake of calls given and statements made in various quarters for inciting violence and causing disruption on the day of counting of votes," it said.
The central security agencies have received inputs that some organisations and individuals, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Tripura, have given certain statements which may lead to violence and disruption in counting process, an official said.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Wednesday also issued an advisory to all private satellite TV channels, asking them to strictly comply with their respective undertakings of carrying news or non-news content.
In accordance with the 2011 policy guidelines for uplinking of television channels from India, the ministry gives permission for uplinking under two categories -- non-news and current affairs, and news and current affairs.
News channels are mandated to carry news and current affairs content, while non-news and current affairs channels are not mandated to carry any news and current affairs content.
At the time of applying for a non-news TV channel, the applicant company gives an undertaking that the proposed channel is purely an entertainment channel and does not have any news or current affairs based programme.
"All TV channels may strictly ensure that there is no violation of the conditions of the guidelines," the I&B ministry order said.

Comment on this Story