The mammoth exercise of counting the hundreds of millions of votes cast in India's seventh consecutive Lok Sabha elections begins Tuesday morning, with poll officials and party workers bracing for a long day and night as the results gradually unfold.
Voting took place across seven phases from April 19 to June 1 to elect 543 members to the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of parliament. Around 900 million citizens were eligible to vote in what is the world's largest democratic exercise.
As per guidelines from the Election Commission of India (EC), the electronic voting machine (EVM) tallying will be preceded by counting of postal ballots starting at 8 AM across the thousands of counting centers.
"The rules clearly state that the postal ballot count will start first at all centers in the country without any doubt," asserted Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar at a press briefing on Monday. He stated that after approximately half an hour, the counting of EVM votes will commence.
For additional verification, voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips from five randomly selected polling stations in each constituency will be cross-checked against the corresponding EVM counts.
The EC has stated that counting trends and results for all 543 constituencies will be updated periodically on its website at results.eci.gov.in as well as on the Voter Helpline mobile app.
While the outcome remains uncertain, several exit polls released after the final phase have predicted that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is poised to comfortably eclipse its tally of 352 seats from 2019. Two surveys have projected the BJP itself improving upon its previous 303 seats.
The opposition Indian National Congress party and its allies will be looking to prevent a second successive sweeping mandate for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
With officials expecting the final results to be declared sometime on May 23, all eyes are on whether the exit poll predictions match the actual verdict from over 900 million voters.
