Top Election Commission officials will arrive from Delhi on Thursday evening for completing formalities related to issuing certificates to the winning candidates.
Twenty thousand personnel drawn from the state and central governments will be involved in the counting of votes for 294 assembly seats in West Bengal on Thursday. Election Commission officials said counting will start from 8 AM in 90 venues in the state which will be guarded by a three-layered cordon.
Seventy eight companies of central armed forces have been deployed to guard the strong rooms where EVMS have been kept. The first layer of the cordon will be at the 100 m periphery around the counting venue where Section 144 of CrPc will be in force and no cars will be allowed to ply.
"Everyone will have to get down and walk. It will be a pedestrian only zone," state Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dibyendu Sarkar said.
Frisking will be done in the second layer while the third and innermost layer will be manned by central forces and state police will not be allowed inside, officials said. Inside the counting hall no one will be allowed to leave or enter without the permission of the returning officer.
Strict instructions have been issued to ensure that no one besides the observer are allowed to take mobile phones inside the venue. Each of the 294 constituencies will have one counting observer to monitor the entire process. The observer will be assisted by a number of micro-observers.
Functioning under the returning officer will be assistant returning officers and counting supervisors. Sarkar said the entire process of counting will be recorded by a videographer. There are altogether 394 counting halls and 312 strong rooms.
Postal ballots will be counted first after which EVMs will be opened. Since there has been a fortnight-long gap between polling and counting in the state, EC officials have made special arrangements for extra power packs as batteries of many EVMs may have drained out during this period, the officials said.
In the event of malfunctioning of the EVMs, engineers from Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) will be called in to retrieve the result from auxiliary display unit of the machines, they said. But if the engineers fail to retrieve the result, then a decision on further action will be taken by the EC.
All central security forces deployed in the state for polling will leave on Friday following end of counting tomorrow and after keeping the EVMs in the strong rooms, the officials said. Top EC officials will arrive from Delhi in the evening tomorrow for completing formalities related to issuing certificates to the winning candidates, they added.
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