LS Polls Counting to be held in 20 centres in Kerala

     Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 3 (PTI) Preparations for counting of votes polled in the April 26 Lok Sabha elections in Kerala are complete and the process will take place in 20 centres across the state on Tuesday.

    A total of 194 candidates are vying for the 20 seats in the state, making the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls a crucial battleground for the CPI(M)-led ruling LDF, the Congress-headed UDF and the BJP-led NDA.

    According to Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Kaul, measures have been taken to ensure that the vote counting process is transparent and secure.

    "A review meeting of district collectors was held today evening. All preparations have been completed and both collectors and Assistant Returning Officers are confident about the vote counting procedure," he told reporters here on Monday.

    The counting will start at 8 am, beginning with the postal ballots, he said.

    The counting of votes from the voting machines will commence half an hour after the counting of postal ballots begins, the commission explained.

     "Initial trends are expected by 9 am," he said.

    A unified system has been prepared to provide real-time results to the public and the media, Kaul said.

    The election results will be available in real-time on the Election Commission's website and the Voter Helpline app.

    The results will be accessible live through the website https://results.eci.gov.in, using the Election Commission's ENCORE software.

    As each round of vote counting is completed, the results will be directly provided by the Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) from the counting centres, and this real-time data will be available on the website.

     This is the first time in a Lok Sabha election that results from all constituencies in the country will be made available through a unified system, he said.

    Real-time information will also be accessible through the Election Commission's Voter Helpline app.

    Media centres have been set up at all counting centres in the state.

    Election results of the Lok Sabha constituencies will be available on digital display boards at these centres, he added.

    Select educational institutions were turned into counting centres in various constituencies in the southern state, EC sources said.

    The EC made it clear that only counting supervisors, counting assistants, micro-observers, Election Commission representatives, observers, government officials on election duty, candidates and their election agents would be allowed into the counting hall.

     Each Assembly segment will have a separate hall for counting votes, with a maximum of 14 tables in each hall, the sources added.

    Each table will have a counting supervisor, a gazetted rank officer, a counting assistant, and a micro-observer to ensure the transparency of the counting process.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)