Odisha bypolls: Vote counting begins

Bhubaneswar: Counting of votes for bypolls to Balasore Sadar and Tirtol assembly constituencies held on November 3 began at 8 AM today. The results will decide the fate of 15 candidates.

Elaborate arrangements have been made for the counting of votes amid strict adherence to the Covid-19 guidelines. The counting of postal ballots will be started first followed by the EVM counting.

For the Balasore Sadar constituency, counting will be done at the Balasore Collectorate, while counting for the Tirtol assembly constituency will be held at the SVM College premises, Jagatsinghpur.

A three-layer security arrangement has been made for counting of votes in the two assembly constituencies. The outer layer will be manned by the local police while the middle layer will be manned by the state armed police personnel and the innermost layer by the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF).

Round wise results will be uploaded to the website results.eci.gov.in. The same will be disseminated outside the counting centre as well as CEO’s office. Apart from this, the results can also be viewed round wise on the social media handles of the CEO, both Twitter and Facebook.

The by-elections in the two constituencies were necessitated by the demise of BJP MLA Madan Mohan Dutta in Balasore and BJD legislator Bishnu Charan Das in Tirtol.

(with IANS inputs)