25,000 assigned counting duty

Mumbai: More than 25,000 election officials and personnel will supervise the counting process for the Vidhan Sabha elections on Thursday. The counting of votes will take place at 269 locations.

Additional chief election commissioner Dilip Shinde said that adequate arrangements have been made to ensure peaceful counting. The counting will begin at 8 am on Thursday.

“Around 25,000 personnel have been deployed on counting duty. Counting of votes for the 288 Assembly segments will be conducted at 269 locations,” he said.

Each constituency will have around 14 to 20 tables depending on the number of polling booths. Each table will have one supervisor, two assistants and one micro observer.

Mr Shinde said that closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras have been installed at every counting centres and strong rooms. The entire process of ferrying EVMs from strong rooms to the table and returning it back will be on record.

Adequate police bandobast has been provided at the counting centres, whereas strong rooms have been provided a three-tier security of Central Reser-ved Police Force (CRPF), State Reserved Police Force (SRPF) and local police.

The polling held on Monday saw a voter turnout of 61.13 per cent, a dip from the 63.20 per cent recorded in 2014. The highest turnout, of 83.93 per cent, was reported in the Karveer Assembly seat in Kolhapur, while the lowest was in Mumbai’s Colaba seat at 40.11 per cent.

In the Satara Lok Sabha bypoll, also held on Monday, the voter turnout was 67.15 per cent. The bypoll was necessitated after Nationalist Congress Party MP Udayanraje Bhosale quit the party and his Lok Sabha seat and joined the ruling BJP, which renominated him from the constituency.

The state has 8,98,39,600 eligible voters, including 1,06,76,013 in the age group of 18 to 25 years. Nearly 6.5 lakh polling personnel were deployed at 96,661 polling booths across the state on election day.