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
February 14,2020

Feb 14: India will never forget the martyrdom of the security personnel killed in last year's Pulwama attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday.

He termed the slain security personnel were "exceptional individuals" who devoted their lives to serving and protecting the nation.

On February 14 last year, a convoy of vehicles carrying security personnel on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethpora in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. Forty Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in the attack.

"Tributes to the brave martyrs who lost their lives in the gruesome Pulwama Attack last year. They were exceptional individuals who devoted their lives to serving and protecting our nation. India will never forget their martyrdom," tweets PM Modi one year since the Pulwama attack.

"I pay homage to the martyrs of Pulwama Attack. India will forever be grateful of our bravehearts and their families who made supreme sacrifice for the sovereignty and integrity of our motherland," tweets Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

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News Network
March 20,2020

New Delhi, Mar 20: The coronavirus pandemic will leave behind a global recession with small businesses, self-employed and daily wagers taking the worst hit, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said on thursday.

"The virus will eventually be conquered, but it will have left behind a global recession. The costs of that are incalculably high at this time. The most fearsome toll will be on small businesses, the self-employed & those whose lives depend on meagre daily wages," Mahindra said in a tweet.

Apart from the toll on lives, the legacy of Covid-19 may well be deaths due to stress, loss of livelihoods, a rise in homelessness and in extreme situations, civil unrest, he added.

"The only global experience that has lessons for us in the current situation is the last world war. In the aftermath of WW2, the US came up with the Marshall plan to revive Europe, effectively a giant fiscal pump-priming," Mahindra said.

In the US, the government dramatically dismantled regulations and opened up the economy to trade and these actions led to a boom-cycle that stretched to 1975, he added.

"This time, there will be no victors, only the vanquished. So every country will have to create its own post ‘virus war” marshall plan & take care of those in society who are hit the hardest. Perhaps we too can build the foundations of a sustained global growth cycle," Mahindra said.

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News Network
January 7,2020

Mumbai, Jan 7: Facing criticism from social media and political quarters for holding a 'Free Kashmir' poster during a protest against violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Mehak Prabhu, a Mumbai-based storyteller, on Tuesday clarified that she meant to highlight the restrictions imposed in Jammu and Kashmir and wishes to see peace in the region, adding she had no other motive behind her actions.

"At around 7 pm yesterday, I reached where the protest was happening at the Gateway of India. Like anybody else who believes in democracy, I also joined that protest. We were standing for justice to the JNU students," Prabhu said in a video posted on Facebook.

"I saw a bunch of people who were painting placards on every issue like NRC, CAA and for JNU students. There was a placard lying on the side which said 'Free Kashmir'. The first thing which came to my mind when I saw that placard was about the basic constitutional rights of Kashmiris," she said.

Prabhu also said that she was not a Kashmiri and was brought up in Mumbai. She outlined that she was standing with a flower in her hand and asserted that the entire matter was "completely blown out of proportion".

"I was quietly standing with a flower in my hand. This means we need to make peace together. That was my only intention in holding that placard. The narrative that has been put out is absolutely wrong," she said, describing the reactions to the matter was "crazy".

The Mumbai-based storyteller underlined that the incident is scary and urged the people to spread the words of what she said and not hatred.

"The way it has gone, it is very scary. I am a simple person. As a woman, it is very scary for my safety right now. Spread this side of my story and let's stop it here. Let us not spread the hate. It has happened to me, it can happen to anyone. We should not live in fear," Prabhu further said.

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