Delhi election: Counting of votes begins; early trends shows AAP crossing halfway mark

Counting of votes polled in high-stakes Delhi Assembly election began on Tuesday morning amid tight security at various centres set up to carry out exercise. Republic-Jan Ki Baat Exit polls have predicted victory for ruling Aam Aadmi Party, but Bharatiya Janata Party leaders maintained that surveys would fall flat.

Early trends showed AAP winning big

counting began at 8 am and will be held in multiple rounds, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ranbir Singh said. "Elaborate security arrangements have been put in place. exercise is being carried out as per laid-down procedures of Election Commission. postal ballots will be counted first till around 8.30 am and n votes cast through electronic voting machines will be counted," Singh said.

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" counting centres are spread across 21 locations, spanning 70 constituencies. Each centre has several counting halls, equal to number of constituencies falling in that district. Each EVM consists of a ballot unit (BU), a controls units (CU) and a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT.) After counting of votes through CUs from every assembly constituency, five VVPATs will be randomly selected and y will be counted", official said.

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Counting centres

counting centres are located across 11 districts, including at CWG Sports Complex in east Delhi, NSIT Dwarka in west Delhi, Meerabai Institute of Techlogy and G B Pant Institute of Techlogy in souast Delhi, Sir CV Raman ITI, Dheerpur in central Delhi, and Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Bawana in rth Delhi. election, largely seen as a battle between AAP and BJP, was held on Saturday, sealing fate of 672 candidates -- 593 men and 79 women.

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Election summary

Nearly 24 hours after polling ended in Delhi, Election Commission on Sunday anunced that final voter turut was 62.59 per cent, five per cent less than 2015, and asserted that it followed laid down process to compile data, after AAP questioned "delay" re were 13,780 polling booths where every vote was accounted for by presiding officers, which is a time-consuming exercise, Sandeep Saxena, senior deputy election commissioner, said at a press conference on Sunday. Over 1.47 crore people were eligible to vote in Delhi polls, including 2.33 lakh in group of 18-19. AAP had routed rival parties in last Assembly polls, bagging 67 seats while BJP was reduced to mere three seats and Congress had drawn a blank. 

(with PTI inputs)

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