India decides: Which party will rule India for the next five year?
HIGHLIGHTS
- 67.11 per cent of the 909.9 million eligible Indian voters had cast their votes
- Seven-phase elections
- Over 8,000 candidates were in the fray for 542 seats
- 272 seats needed to form the government
Counting of 1.37 crore ballots for 13 Punjab seats begin
The counting of 1.37 crore ballots for the 13 parliamentary seats of Punjab began on Thursday morning amidst tight security, electoral officials said. Thirty-nine companies of central forces have been deployed for the security of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) at 21 locations across the state, an official said. The main contest in the state is between the ruling Congress and the Akali Dal-BJP combine. However, all eyes are on two seats — Amritsar and Gurdaspur — witnessing a clash of personalities. In Amritsar, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri is making his electoral debut against sitting Congress MP Gurjit Aujla. In Gurdaspur, actor Sunny Deol is the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate against Congress state President Sunil Jakhar, who won the October 2017 by-election by 1.92 lakh votes. Political dynasties continue to dominate the state’s politics. As many as four Congress and three Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) candidates belong to political families. SAD supremo Parkash Singh Badal’s daughter-in-law and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur is locked in a multi-cornered contest in the SAD stronghold of Bathinda. His son and former Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal is in fray from Ferozepur. In Patiala, former Union Minister Preneet Kaur, wife of Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, is in the fray for the fifth time. The three-time MP was defeated by the AAP’s Dharamvira Gandhi by over 20,000 votes in 2014. This time Gandhi is in the fray as a nominee of the Nawan Punjab Party, a new outfit. In Ludhiana, Ravneet Singh Bittu, grandson of late Chief Minister Beant Singh who was assassinated in 1995, is seeking re-election. Former Union Minister Manish Tewari (Congress) is in the fray from Anandpur Sahib. He is pitted against sitting Akali Dal MP Prem Singh Chandumajra. Unlike 2014, the infighting-ridden AAP is now struggling to save its sinking ship, with several leaders either having defected or facing suspension. Countering defections within the party, actor-comedian Bhagwant Mann, the AAP’s only hope to retain the Sangrur seat, accused party rebel leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira of being an agent of both the Congress and the Akali Dal and of engineering defections of AAP legislators to the Congress. Of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, the Akali Dal-BJP combine currently holds five (four Akali Dal, one BJP), while the Congress and the AAP have four each. In the 2014 polls, Punjab saw 70.61 per cent polling.
Counting begins for 42 LS seats in West Bengal
Counting of votes for the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal began on Thursday in 58 counting centres across the state. The counting started with the postal ballots, following which the EVMs would be opened. Once the counting of votes polled in the EVMs is over, five random VVPATs of each Assembly segment will be tallied with the voting machines in the presence of the counting observers. According to an official, the counting of voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), the counting of postal ballots, votes in the EVMs and the scanning of Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballots System (ETPBS), will make the process lengthy. “Our aim is to complete the entire counting accurately and seamlessly. Counting of five polling stations of every assembly segment will be done at one table. So the final result is expected by Friday,” Additional Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, Sanjay Basu said. Also, the counting for the by-polls to Islampur, Habibpur (ST), Kandi, Nowda, Darjeeling and Bhatpara assembly constituencies will be taken up. Two Parliamentary Constituencies – Kolkata North and Jhargram – will have maximum of 25 rounds of counting. At the other end, Jalpaiguri, Raiganj and Balurghat seats will have only 10 rounds of counting. As many as 200 companies of Central Armed Paramilitary Forces (CAPF) have been retained by the Commission in addition to the 82 CAPF companies deployed for guarding the strong rooms and counting centres. All the counting centres have a three-tier security system and the strong rooms are being guarded by the CAPF. The seven-phase voting for 42 constituencies began on April 11 and ended on May 19.
Counting of ballots for 10 Haryana seats begin
The counting of ballots for all the 10 parliamentary seats of Haryana began on Thursday amid tight security, electoral officials said. Chief Electoral Officer Rajeev Ranjan said there are about 1,05,859 service voters. He said all preparations have been made for the counting of votes, which will be carried out in 90 counting centres at 39 places. Director General of Police Manoj Yadava said the state has deployed 10 additional companies of Central Armed Paramilitary Forces to maintain law and order in Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani, Sirsa and Hisar districts. It is a do-or-die battle for Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and his predecessor and ‘marginalised’ Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress and Om Prakash Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) are the three main parties in the fray. The stakes are high for Hooda in these elections as he is trying to prove that he is still a mass leader and could lead the Congress in the forthcoming Assembly polls. Hooda was marginalised after the party’s humiliating defeat in the October 2014 Assembly polls held under his helm. The other big names in the poll fray are former Union Minister Kumari Selja, who is fighting on the Congress ticket from Ambala, a reserved seat. The BJP’s Rao Inderjit Singh is contesting from Gurugram, while former Congress state minister Ajay Yadav is pitted against him. Union Minister Krishan Pal Gujjar, who won the Faridabad seat in 2014 with a huge 4.7 lakh margin, is vying to retain the seat. He is facing a challenge from former Congress MP Avtar Singh Bhadana and AAP state chief Navin Jaihind. Former Chief Minister Chautala’s grandsons — Arjun and the estranged Dushyant and Digvijay — are making their debut plunge into electoral politics. Arjun and Digvijay Chautala are trying their luck from Kurukshetra and Sonipat seats respectively as candidates of the INLD and the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), a breakaway INLD faction. The JJP and the AAP have formed an alliance. Hisar is going to witness a triangular clash of dynasts from where Dushyant Chautala, who leads the JJP, is struggling to retain his seat. He is pitted against debutants Bhavya Bishnoi of the Congress and BJP’s bureaucrat-turned-politician Brijendra Singh. While Bhavya, the youngest in the fray, is the grandson of late three-time Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, Brijendra Singh is the son of Congress turncoat and Steel Minister Birender Singh.
Counting of votes begins
Officials around India began Thursday the mammoth process of counting the roughly 600 million votes cast in the world’s biggest election, with results due later in the day. If there is a clear trend, this should be evident by around midday (0630 GMT). Exit polls pointed to a victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi but such projections have been wrong in the past.
Service voters stood at 18 lakh. These include personnel of the armed forces, central police force personnel and state police personnel who are posted outside their constituencies.
Diplomats and support staff posted in Indian embassies abroad are also counted as service voters.
The exercise of counting postal ballots manually will itself take a couple of hours at least, an election commission official said.
The paper trail machines slips will be counted in the end. As per the procedure, first the slips will be counted and the EVM displays would be switched on later to match the results.
In case of a mismatch, the results based in paper slip count will be considered as final. The entire exercise of EVM-Paper trail machine matching will take an additional four to five hours.
Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the grounds of excessive use of money power.
The poll panel is yet to announce a fresh date for elections in Vellore.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several union ministers, Congress President Rahul Gandhi, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav are among key leaders who contested the polls.
This is for the first time in a Lok Sabha (parliament) election that results of voting machines will be matched with slips generated by paper trail machines (VVPAT).
The Election Commission of India has not conceded to any allegation that the EVMs used for polling can be tampered with. However, VVPATs have been used in some elections in a bid to counter all allegation of tampering.
