Thursday, 10 March 2022 | PNS | Dehradun
The counting of votes of postal ballots can take time on Thursday with the opposition Congress deciding to scrutinize every such vote and demand cancellation of the suspected postal ballots. The party has sent a directive to all the candidates that their agents deployed at counting centres should keep a close eye on every postal ballot (paper) and Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot (ETPBS). It is learnt that the party has provided a list containing the names of the personnel who have either retried or have died. On receipt of bogus postal ballots or those which do not have the designation of the approving officers, the same would be contested by the agents of the Congress. The central observer and general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) Mohan Prakash told The Pioneer that necessary instructions have been given to the candidates and the agents who would be present at the counting tables. He said that apart from keeping a strict vigil on the postal ballots the agents have been asked to press of the counting of the paper slip 20 percent Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT) of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and match them with the number of votes polled in the machines.
With the Congress determined to keep vigil on postal ballots and ETPBS and challenge the dubious votes the chances are that the counting of postal ballots would take time on Thursday. As per the data shared by the Election Commission (EC) it had distributed 94,471 ETPBS to the service voters and out of them it has received 42,110 ETPBS till March 8. Similarly it has released 54,996 postal ballots for the employees deployed in election duty and it has so far received 49,264 such ballots. The EC would accept the postal ballots received till 8 AM on March 10 .
