Day Of Reckoning

NEW DELHI: The counting of votes for the seven-phase elections to India’s lower house of parliament, the world’s biggest democratic exercise, will take place on Thursday bringing the curtains down on a bitterly-fought contest which the country rarely witnessed even as the Centre on Wednesday issued an alert to the states regarding the possibility of violence in different parts of the country.
Most of the exit polls have predicted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is on course to retain power for a second term, riding on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma like the way he swept to power in 2014.
However, the opposition parties have trashed the results of the exit polls, claiming that the BJP will suffer severe drubbing due to rising unemployment, farm distress and slowdown in the economy.
The voting was staggered between April 11 and May 19 in which around 67 per cent of the nearly 900 million eligible people exercised their franchise to elect 542 members of the Lok Sabha from a total of 8,049 contestants.
In the 2014 elections, the BJP won 282 seats while the Congress had suffered a severe drubbing getting an all-time low of 44 seats as against 206 it won in 2009.
From ‘chowkidar chor hai’ and ‘bhrashtachari no. 1’ to ‘khaki underwear’, acerbic remarks ruled the roost this election season, making it one of the most bitterly-contested parliamentary polls post Independence.
Election Commission officials said the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections will begin at 8.00 am and results are expected only by late evening. For the first time in Lok Sabha polls, the EC will tally vote count on Electronic Voting Machines with voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips in five polling stations in each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency. It will effectively mean that out of nearly 10.3 lakh polling stations, the EVM-VVPAT matching will take place in 20,600 such stations. In case of a mismatch, the results based on 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, EC officials said.
The opposition parties Tuesday raised concerns over reports of alleged tampering of EVMs and asked the Election Commission to ensure transparency in counting.
EC officials said the voting percentage of 67.11 this time was the highest-ever voter turnout in Indian parliamentary elections.
Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the ground of excessive use of money power.
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.
Alert sounded
The Centre on Wednesday issued an alert to the states regarding the possibility of violence in different parts of the country in connection with the counting of votes on Thursday.
The alert has been communicated by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to the state Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police, an official said.
The Ministry has asked the states and the Union Territories (UTs) to maintain law and order, peace and public tranquility.
The states and the UTs were further asked to take adequate measures to safeguard the strong rooms where the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are kept and the venues of counting of votes, the official said.
The alert mentioned that it was being issued in the wake of calls given and statements made in various quarters for inciting violence and causing disruption on the day of counting of votes. (Agencies)