The Election Commission of India will start counting of votes for the seven-phase Lok Sabha Elections today (23 May, Thursday) at 8 am, bringing the curtains down on a bitterly-fought election. 

Most of the exit polls have predicted that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the ruling party at the Centre, is on course to retain power for a second term, riding on Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s charisma like the way he swept to power in 2014.

However, the Opposition parties, including Congress, have trashed results of the exit polls, claiming that the BJP will suffer severe drubbing due to rising unemployment, farm distress and a slowdown in the economy.

Election Commission officials said the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections will begin at 8 am on Thursday and results are expected only by late evening.

EC officials said the voting percentage of 67.11 this time was the highest ever voter-turnout in Indian parliamentary elections.

They said as per procedure, postal ballots would be the first to be counted.

The number of service voters stands at 18 lakh and these include personnel of the armed forces, central police force personnel and state police personnel who are posted outside their constituencies.

Diplomats and support staff posted in Indian embassies abroad are also counted as service voters.

Out of the 18 lakh registered voters, 16.49 lakh have sent their postal ballots to their respective returning officers as on 17 May.

The exercise of counting postal ballots manually will itself take a couple of hours at least, an EC official said.

Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the ground of excessive use of money power.

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