The Election Commission of India will start counting votes for 17th Lok Sabha elections on 23 May, 2019 (Thursday). With VVPAT counting to be introduced in this Lok Sabha election, the results on 23 May are likely to get delayed by five to six hours, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Ranbir Singh has said.

He said after the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) counting is over, the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPATs) will be counted as per the Supreme Court guidelines. Speaking about the Assembly constituencies of Delhi, Singh said, "From every Assembly constituency, five (VVPATs) will be randomly selected and they will be counted. There is a special VVPAT booth in every counting hall. It will take place in five rounds."

Delhi has 70 assembly constituencies and in all 350 VVPATs will be counted.

"Every assembly segment had 200 polling stations and five polling stations will be selected randomly. This will delay the formal results. But trends will be out early. Formal declaration of results will be delayed by five to six hours," Singh told PTI.

He also briefed Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Dev about the expected delay in results, officials said.

Delhi Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik was present during the briefing and he apprised them about the security arrangements that will be made in accordance with the Election Commission guidelines. Delhi has seven parliamentary constituencies and there is one counting centre in each of them. The counting centres will have one counting hall for each of the 10 assembly segments, officials said.

In each counting hall, a maximum of 14 tables can be put and machines that would come in the first round, their results will be compiled and uploaded on the `Suvidha` app of the Election Commission. The counting will commence at 8 am with postal ballots. Officials will have to ensure that the postal ballot counting is over with at least two rounds of EVM counting yet to be done.

After the EVM counting is over, the VVPAT counting will commence.

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.

Nearly 39.6 lakh EVMs and 17.4 lakh voter-verifiable paper trail machines (VVPAT) are being used in these polling stations. These include reserves.

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