The State Election Commission (SEC) on Friday announced that elaborate measures have been undertaken for the counting of votes for the Odisha Municipal Elections 2022 which will be held tomorrow. It is testing times for the candidates, who contested for councillor, chairperson and mayor posts in the urban elections in the State.
SEC Secretary, Rabindranath Sahu said as per the schedule the counting of votes will start at 8 am tomorrow (March 26) and continue till all votes are counted.
There will be two tables each in NAC for the counting of votes for the councillor and chairperson. Similarly, the counting of votes in municipality will be done in 5 tables each for councillor and chairperson. Sharing details about the counting procedure in three municipal corporations, Sahu informed that the counting of votes will be conducted simultaneously in 12 tables each for councillor and Mayor.
“To ensure transparency, we have decided to provide one counting supervisor and one counting assistant for each table. There will be Group D staff to assist the teams in transporting EVMs to the counting tables,” said Sahu.
The votes of polling personnel, who exercised their franchise through election duty certificate, will be counted first and subsequently the counting of votes in EVM will begin.
“The results will be declared ward-wise and for Mayor posts the lead will be announced after each rounds,” Sahu added.
Twin City Police Commissioner Soumendra Priyadarshi said that a three-tier security arrangement has been made for the counting of votes in the Odisha Municipal Elections in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Jatni and Choudwar. The EVMs will be transported to the counting centres from the strong rooms amid tight security.
Twenty platoons of police force will be deployed, said Priyadarshi. “As the winning candidates will take out processions, special measures have been taken for security as well. As Odisha Assembly session is currently underway, we have made separate security arrangements for counting of votes as well,” Priyadarshi added.