Mian Javed Latif said a decision on PML-N supremo and the three-time prime minister Sharif's anticipated return will be discussed with the coalition partners.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said there was a competition among Congress leaders as to who will use the most abusive words against him, referring to the opposition party president Mallikarjun Kharge's 'Ravan' jibe at him.
Shuja had on Monday claimed at an event in London that the EVMs can be tampered with and that the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were rigged.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-Asom Gana Parishad alliance swept the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) polls on Sunday, bagging 58 out of the total 60 wards, while the main opposition party Congress drew a blank.
Thackeray said people should be aware of how religious issues are raked up to distract their attention from core issues.
He also lamented that EVMs are being used as a 'football' and some sections are doing a 'motivated slugfest' over their use.
The Delhi CM said that the people of India won't forgive the Election Commission and the BJP for manipulating the Constitution.
A total 2.51 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise for the second phase of elections, including 1.29 crore men and 1.22 crore women.
A total of 833 candidates from 61 political parties, including Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel of the Bharatiya Janata Party, are contesting the polls in these assembly segments spread across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Gandhinagar and other districts.
An average 59.24 per cent voter turnout was recorded as of 5 pm on Thursday across 89 assembly seats in the first phase of Gujarat elections, officials said.
More than 50,000 officials have been deployed for the counting of votes on Thursday in the five states where assembly polls were held recently.
Addressing a press conference in London via Skype, the man, identified as Syed Shuja, said the BJP would have won Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh elections if his team hadn't intercepted the BJP attempts to hack the transmissions in these states.
The rally was addressed by BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav.
With parties blaming the electronic voting machines, the poll panel was extra cautious in its approach.
'This means the remedy will be worse than the disease. The thing which you want to avoid will happen.'
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.
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".
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
A division bench of the high Court comprising acting Chief Justice Sanjay Kumar Misra and Justice N S Dhanik posed the question to the EC while hearing a PIL on Wednesday seeking postponement of the upcoming Assembly polls in Uttarakhand in view of the rising cases of COVID-19 and its latest variant Omicron.
The bypolls were conducted for two Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, one each in Meghalaya and Odisha and the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency in Punjab.
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.
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.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra has said he is ready to enter politics 'if people want' and this will allow him to serve them in a major way.
Of the 59 seats, the BJP had won 51 in the 2017 Assembly elections, four had gone to the Samajwadi Party, and three to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
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.
Memon said that the opposition should introspect why Modi keeps getting such a "positive mandate" and dismissed suggestions of manipulation of EVMs, an oft-repeated complaint of the Congress and other political parties.
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.
Over 83 per cent of the more than 13 lakh electorate cast their vote on Monday in the single-day Nagaland state election which passed off by and large peacefully, Chief Electoral Officer V Shashank Shekhar said.
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.
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.
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.
The commission said polling was held at 15,940 polling stations spread across 44 assembly constituencies in this phase of polls.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of hatching a conspiracy to assassinate Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, fearing poll defeats in Gujarat and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), and alleged Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari's involvement in it.
Pakistan's election commission has expressed its inability to hold general elections within three months due to legal, constitutional and logistical challenges, according to a media report on Tuesday.
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.
"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.
