The counting of votes for the Bihar assembly elections will continue till late in the night due to a 63% increase in the number of EVMs, the Election Commission said on Tuesday.
"We hope to finish the counting as per procedure late tonight," said Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of Bihar Chandra Bhushan Kumar.
According to a PTI report, EC officials said that over one crore votes had been counted till around 1.30 pm out of nearly 4.16 crore votes that were polled in the three-phase elections. Out of nearly 7.3 crore voters, 57.09% had cast votes in the polls. An official said the counting has been "glitch-free" so far
Meanwhile, to ensure distancing norms this time counting is being held at 55 locations.
The number of tables used per hall has now been reduced to seven from the usual 14, although, 14 tables have been put in place and as a result, the number of locations has increased.
Bhushan Kumar said the number of rounds for counting varies between 19 and 51 in different constituencies. The average comes to approximately 35 rounds.
The commission had increased the number of polling stations from nearly 65,000 in the 2015 assembly polls to 1.06 lakh. This meant an increase in the number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) as well. This time, the EC has restricted the number of voters per polling station to 1,000 from 1,500 to maintain physical distancing, thus increasing the number of polling stations.
