Counting of votes for Delhi Assembly elections will begin early Saturday morning, amid tight security.
Counting across 19 centres in different parts of the national capital will begin at 8 am. Postal ballots will be counted first.
An estimated 60.54 per cent of over 1.56 crore voters in Delhi exercised their franchise in the Assembly elections conducted in a single phase on February 5, according to the data of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
“All the arrangements for a smooth and fair counting process have been made. Approximately 5,000 staff members, comprising Counting Supervisors, Counting Assistants, Micro Observers, Statistical Staff, and other supporting personnel, have been deployed and trained for the counting process,” Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi, R Alice Vaz said.
She also informed that the counting of voter slips of five VVPATs in each Assembly constituency will be randomly selected.
The CEO added that real time results can be accessed from the ECI website.
Mentioning security arrangements, Special Commissioner of Police and Nodal Officer Devesh Srivastva told the media that a multi-layered security arrangements have been put in place for the counting day.
Prominent among those from the AAP whose fate will be decided include national convener and former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister Atishi and several Ministers of her Cabinet including Gopal Rai, Saurabh Bharadwaj and Imran Hussain former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Somnath Bharti and Amanatullah Khan.
Bigwigs from the BJP include Parvesh Verma, Ramesh Bidhuri, Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta, Kapil Mishra, Kailash Gahlot, OP Sharma, Satish Upadhyay, Harish Khurana and Ravinder Negi, while form the Congress its Delhi unit chief Devender Yadav, former MP Sandeep Dikshit, former MLAs—Anil Chaudhary, Haroon Yusuf and Alka Lamba.
Notably, exit polls telecast by different private TV channels, on Wednesday evening, predicted comfortable victory for the BJP in the Delhi Assembly elections. Most of the exit polls have predicted a big win for the BJP as the saffron party is projected to get over 40 seats out of 70 assembly seats in Delhi while only two exit polls have predicted the victory of the AAP. The Congress may end up with one seat.
However, the AAP and Congress rejected the exit polls prediction of a clean sweep for the saffron party.
Earlier, all three main contestants, the AAP, BJP and the Congress, claimed that the people of Delhi had voted in their favour.
In the outgoing Assembly, the AAP had 62 seats while the BJP had eight. The Congress had failed to open its account in the last Assembly polls, held in 2020.