The Election Commission of India (ECI) has completed foolproof preparations for the counting of votes in 80 Lok Sabha seats, which is scheduled to begin at 8 am on June 4.

State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa said here on Sunday that the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha general election will take place in 81 counting centres in 75 districts of the state on Tuesday.

“Counting of votes will be done at two centres each in Agra, Meerut, Azamgarh, Deoria, Sitapur, and Kushinagar districts. Besides, the counting of votes for 8 Lok Sabha constituencies will take place in 3 districts, while the counting of votes for 37 Lok Sabha constituencies will take place in 2 districts, and the counting of votes in 35 Lok Sabha constituencies will take place in one district,” he disclosed.

The CEO said that postal ballots would be counted at the counting venue of the Returning Officer’s (RO) Headquarters in the district. Counting of votes will be done assembly constituency-wise. After that, the results of the Lok Sabha constituency would be declared by adding up the results of the assembly constituencies included in the Lok Sabha constituency.

He said that in the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha constituency and the Sahibabad assembly segment, there are a maximum number of 1,127 polling booths. As a result, the counting of votes is expected to be completed in a maximum of 41 rounds.

The CEO said that to monitor the counting process, the Election Commission of India has deployed 179 Central observers. Among them, 15 observers have been assigned to monitor one assembly segment each, 104 observers will oversee two assembly segments each, and 60 observers will manage three assembly segments each. He further said that the counting of votes in the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies will be conducted by 80 Returning Officers and 1,581 Assistant Returning Officers.

Besides, the counting of votes for the Dadraul (Shahjahanpur), Lucknow East (Lucknow), Gansadi (Balrampur), and Duddhi (SC) assembly segments in the Sonbhadra district will be completed by 4 Returning Officers and 26 Assistant Returning Officers. All vote counting and sealing proceedings will be conducted under CCTV surveillance.

He said that the Election Commission of India has granted approval for additional rooms for the counting of postal ballots in all Lok Sabha constituencies. The counting of postal ballots will commence at 8 am.

A total of 851 candidates, comprising 771 men and 80 women, are in the fray in the Lok Sabha general election. The Ghosi Lok Sabha constituency has the highest number of candidates with 28, while the Kaiserganj Lok Sabha constituency has the lowest with 4 candidates.

The CEO said that adequate deployment of central paramilitary forces has been made to ensure secure counting of votes.

“A three-tier security system will be in place to protect the counting venue. The first level of security, within a 100-metre radius of the counting site, will be managed by the local police force. The second level, at the entrance gate of the counting venue, will be manned by the state police force. The third level of security will be dedicated to the counting hall under the supervision of CAPFs,” Rinwa said.

The CEO said that if, upon completing the counting of votes, the difference in the victory margin exceeds the number of votes cast at a particular booth, then the result will be declared without counting the votes from that booth. However, if the difference is less than the votes polled at the said booth, then both the mock votes recorded in the mock poll certificate and the actual votes will be tallied from the VVPAT slips, and the result will be declared accordingly.

After the announcement of the vote count results, 5 polling stations will be selected in each assembly constituency on the basis of a draw and the VVPAT slips of those 5 polling stations will be counted for verification purposes.