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No change in VVPAT counting procedure, says Election Commission

Agencies
May 22, 2019

New Delhi: The Election Commission is learnt to have stuck to its plan of counting the paper trail machines slips at the end of counts and not at the beginning as demanded by opposition parties.

The Commission is also learnt to have decided to count postal ballots simultaneously with Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) count due to the "sheer size" of the ballots received this time from service voters.

Till now, the postal ballots were counted in the beginning followed by votes polled in voting machines.

The Commission is learnt to have decided to follow the established procedure of counting voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips for the mandatory five polling stations per assembly segment of each parliamentary constituency at the end of the entire counting process.

The opposition parties which had approached the EC on Tuesday wanted five random VVPATs to be counted first so that if there is a problem or a mismatch, all VVPAT slips can be counted before it is too late.

Though EC had made it clear to the parties on Tuesday that the old protocol would continue, its top officials met Wednesday and decided to continue with counting the slips at the end.

The exact reasoning for sticking to the old protocol was not immediately clear. As per procedure, postal ballots so far were 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 May 17.

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

"We don't want to hurry up, but at the same time we do not want to slow down the counting either keeping in mind the number of such ballots received. Therefore, the postal ballot count could continue simultaneously with EVM result count," an official said.

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News Network
April 20,2020

Mumbai, Apr 20: At least 53 media persons from Mumbai have tested positive for coronavirus, a city civic official said on Monday.

During a special camp organised at the Azad Maidan here on April 16 and 17 for COVID-19 testing of scribes, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) collected swab samples of 171 mediapersons, including electronic and print media journalists, photographers and cameramen.

“Out of the 171 mediapersons, 53 tested positive for coronavirus,” BMC spokesperson Vijay Khabale said, adding that most of those who tested positive are asymptomatic at present.

All the mediapersons found infected with coronavirus will be kept in isolation and a process was underway to find out suitable places to the purpose, he said.

Efforts were also on to trace their high and low risk contacts.

Till Sunday, Mumbai recorded 2,724 coronavirus cases and 132 deaths due to the disease.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Ghaziabad, Jul 28: Days ahead of Eid-ul-Adha, Nand Kishore Gurjar, a BJP MLA from Loni assembly constituency in Ghaziabad, has stoked controversy as he asked people celebrating the festival to "sacrifice their children instead of animals" on the occasion. He also claimed that "meat spreads coronavirus" so people should not be allowed to sacrifice innocent animals.

"People who want to sacrifice on Eid should sacrifice their children. I will not let people consume meat and alcohol in Loni. We will not let people sacrifice innocent animals because meat spreads coronavirus," the BJP legislator said while speaking to reporters.

"The way people have followed the guidelines of the government by not offering prayers and namaz at temples and mosques to contain COVID-19, in the same way, they must not give the sacrifice of animals on this Eid," he added.

"Earlier, sacrifices of animals used to be done in Sanatan Dharam as well. However, now coconut is offered instead. I request the Muslim brothers not to give 'qurbani' of animals. We will stop those who will perform the ritual animal sacrifice. We will not let this happen in Loni," he said.

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News Network
April 21,2020

New Delhi, Apr 21: Tablighi Jamaat leader Maulana Saad Kandhalvi, who has been booked by the Delhi Police for holding a religious congregation here during the lockdown, on Monday urged the followers of the organisation to pray at home in the month of Ramzan.

"I request all, both in India and abroad, to strictly follow the guidelines and instructions of the local or national governments and till the time restrictions are in place and please observe prayers at home. And even in this, we should not invite people from outside," he said in a statement.

Ramzan begins later this week.

While addressing an online briefing on Sunday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal cited the Tablighi Jamaat congregation last month, a major hotspot, and the large inflow of travellers from other countries to Delhi as the reasons for the spread of the virus, and said the city was "fighting a difficult battle".

The Delhi Police crime branch, had on March 31, lodged an FIR against seven people, including the cleric, on a complaint by the Station House Officer of Nizamuddin police station for holding the congregation in alleged violation of the orders against large gatherings to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Later, the Indian Penal Code Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) was added to the FIR.

The cleric is wanted by the Delhi Police and he responded twice to them. He is currently under home quarantine.

In an audio message released earlier this month, Kandhalvi had said he was exercising self-quarantine after several hundreds who visited the congregation at Nizamudddin Markaz tested positive for coronavirus.

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