Nearly 4,800 elected MPs and MLAs will vote on Monday to elect the 15th President of India, with National Democratic Alliance candidate Droupadi Murmu having a clear edge over Opposition's Yashwant Sinha as over 60 per cent votes are expected to be cast in her favour.
With parties blaming the electronic voting machines, the poll panel was extra cautious in its approach.
The SC agreed to hear next week a review plea filed by 21 Opposition leaders seeking further increase in random matching of VVPAT
The EC currently follows a system of random counting of VVPAT slips in one polling booth per assembly segment of a Parliamentary or assembly constituency.
Polling started at 7 am and closed at 6 pm and there were reports of technical snags in EVMs at some places, but voting was peaceful, Election Commission officials said.
"Polling was held peacefully at the 11,697 polling booths across the state with 65.1 per cent of the electorate casting their votes till the close of polls," Chief Electoral Officer Saujanya who does not use a surname said.
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Leaders of 22 political parties had on Tuesday urged the poll panel to ensure paper slips from the VVPAT module are matched before the counting begins so that in cases of discrepancy, all votes in that particular assembly segment can be cross-checked with the paper slips.
Noting that the Congress was not able to win even a single Lok Sabha seat in 17 states, he said it was time for the Congress to introspect and "accept defeat".
Governor La Ganesan and Chief Minister N Biren Singh were among the early voters in their respective constituencies of Sagolband and Heingang.
At many places, where the voters had entered booths before 6 pm and were standing in queues, they were allowed to cast their votes.
The commission said polling was held at 15,940 polling stations spread across 44 assembly constituencies in this phase of polls.
I watched from my balcony and found that during the next eight hours up to 5.30 pm, not one prospective voter was seen to go to the Congress table, notes Rashme Sehgal. The rush was all around the BJP table.
The Supreme Court has made it clear that random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs will take place in five polling booths per assembly segment. Accordingly, the exercise will be held in 20,600 of the 10.35 lakh polling stations across the country.
Kejriwal said the AAP is not like the Congress and cannot be intimidated by the ruling party.
Strong rooms spread across the city storing the electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being heavily guarded, with a 'three-layer security ring'. Tight security arrangements have also been put in place at various centres across the national capital.
This is for the first time in a Lok Sabha election that results of voting machines will be matched with slips generated by paper trail machines.
According to the EC, no mismatch has been reported since the practice of cross-checking votes was introduced.
The plea was filed by several opposition leaders seeking counting of voter verifiable paper audit trail slips of 50 per cent of electronic voting machines in each constituency before the Lok Sabha results are declared.
Banerjee lost the Nandigram assembly elections to BJP candidate and her former lieutenant Suvendu Adhikari by 1,956 votes, the Election Commission said.
Campaigning for the fifth phase ended on Friday evening, and all necessary arrangements have been completed, state Chief Election Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said in Lucknow on Saturday.
The BJP secured a runaway victory in the Municipal Board elections in Assam, pocketing 72 civic bodies out of 80. The Congress, the principal opposition party of the state, could not even win a single civic body.
AI implementation enabler Staqu will deploy its proprietary video analytics system JARVIS to count votes directly from the camera by monitoring the electronic voting machines screens at the counting centre.
Political parties were bracing for the assembly election results on Thursday in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and politically volatile Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, sending out feelers for possible post-poll tie-ups.
The opposition parties might be raising questions over electronic voting machines of India, but the Electronic Voting machiness and credible electoral system have impressed the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Firing a fresh salvo at the Bharatiya Janata Party which had accused the Shiv Sena of paying only lip service to the cause of Hindutva, the latter's member of Parliament Sanjay Raut on Tuesday claimed that the Sena was the first party in the country to contest an election on the Hindutva plank.
Sporadic incidents of violence were reported from various places that went to polls on Saturday during the first phase of the West Bengal assembly election, even as the overall poll situation was largely peaceful with 79.79 per cent turnout recorded till the end of voting, an official said.
The Lt Governor conveyed to the Delhi government that the rules will have to be amended for shunning the EVMs and it was not possible to make the changes as little over a month is left for the polls.
A day after Election Commission rejected his claim that Electronic Voting Machines are not tamper-proof, former bureaucrat Omesh Saigal on Tuesday stuck to his charge that a particular software can be used to rig the polls.
EC officials said the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections will begin at 8 am on Thursday and results are expected only by late evening.
Nearly 68 per cent of the 3.62 crore-strong electorate today turned out to vote in Rajasthan Assembly election that witnessed stray incidents of caste violence and malfunctioning of Electronic Voting Machines.
How many parties contested the first Lok Sabha election?
In a setback to the main opposition Samajwadi Party, the BJP wrested both Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Total 171 votes were cast in a booth in Assam's Dima Hasao district, even though 90 people were eligible to exercise their franchise, officials said on Monday, revealing a massive irregularity.
Guidelines have been issued by the Commission for safe conduct of the electoral exercise in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. These guidelines include lowering the maximum number of voters for a polling booth from 1,600 to 1,000, staggering the polling hours and extending postal ballot facility to those above 80.
Living up to the party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's promise to give 40 per cent of the tickets to women candidates, the Congress fielded 148 of them, of which only one -- Congress Legislature leader Aradhana Mishra Mona -- secured victory.
The measures include an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Election Commissions to provide reliable information around the elections, a custom emoji to encourage participation, a series of pre-bunks and debunks to tackle election-related misinformation, and a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for the upcoming elections.
Bihar Chief Electoral Officer H R Srinivasa said the Election Commission has established a three-tier security system for strong rooms (housing the electronic voting machines) and the counting centres. The inner core is being guarded by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), then there is the Bihar Military Police (BMP) and then the district police, he told reporters.
As round one of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election began in 91 constituencies across the length and breadth of India, from the hills of Kashmir to the islands of Andaman and Nicobar, reports of unrest and irregularities cast shadows over the world's biggest poll process.
The announcement came days after it issued a formal direction that VVPAT will be used at polling stations in all future elections where polls are held using EVMs.
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