(Image source from: The Better India)

The fate of Indian politicians tussled in recently concluded Lok Sabha elections will be decided soon as the Election Commission of India will start counting votes for 17th Lok Sabha elections on 23 May, 2019 (Thursday).

The results are likely to get delayed by five to six hours since Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) counting to be introduced in this Lok Sabha election, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Ranbir Singh has said.

He said after the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) counting is over, the VVPATs will be counted as per the Supreme Court guidelines. Speaking about the Assembly constituencies of Delhi, Singh said, "From every Assembly constituency, five (VVPATs) will be randomly selected and they will be counted. There is a special VVPAT booth in every counting hall. It will take place in five rounds."

Delhi has 70 assembly constituencies and in all 350 VVPATs will be counted.

"Every assembly segment had 200 polling stations and five polling stations will be selected randomly. This will delay the formal results. But trends will be out early. A formal declaration of results will be delayed by five to six hours," Singh told PTI.

The counting will commence at 8 a.m. with postal ballots. Officials will have to ensure that the postal ballot counting is over with at least two rounds of EVM counting yet to be done.

As soon as the counting through electronic voting machine is over, the VVPAT counting will get down.

The Supreme Court has made it clear-cut that random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs will go on in five polling booths per assembly segment. Consequently, the exercise will be held in 20,600 of the 10.35 lakh polling stations across the country.

Almost 39.6 lakh EVMs and 17.4 lakh voter-verifiable paper trail machines are being used in these polling stations.

By Sowmya Sangam