People’s mandate gets unveiled today, counting begins at 8 a.m. RANJIT SINGH

GANGTOK, 15 May: It all boils down to today. The country gets a new government, but as far as Sikkim is concerned, the focus of all attention here will be on how the State has decided for itself for the next five years. It’s counting and results declaration day today. The month of being on the campaign trail, speeches, meetings, strategizing, and wooing the public with all means possible all building up to the 16th of May when the report cards will be handed out. It is a secret ballot, so only guesses can be made until the actual counting is done, but what cannot be ignored is that Election 2014 is keeping everyone guessing more than the recent elections and none, save the invested parties, are willing to stick their necks out to make a guess or offer projections on who will take the day today. This, like most recent elections is a two-way battle, so things can get close.

Sikkim had a handsome voter turnout on 12 April, the date of voting, with the voting percentage touching 82%. Out of an electorate of 3.69 lakh voters, about 2.80 lakh turned up to vote for the next government. There were approximately 70,000 first time voters who will decide, in a major way, the outcome of the counting process.

Over 1,200 Electronic Voting Machines, the recipients of the sacred votes have been in the strong rooms ever since, and now, more than a month later, their seals are set to be removed. Counting begins at 8 a.m. Friday starting with the opening of the postal ballots. The counting from the EVMs will begin at 8:30 a.m., half hour after the postal ballots have been opened.

The TNA auditorium for East, the Zilla Bhawan at Mangan in North, Kyongsa Girls Senior Secondary School in West and Namchi Senior Secondary School in South Sikkim are the respective counting centres.

The counting halls have been equipped with a total of 14 tables in two rows of 7 each- One row for counting of Assembly votes and the other row of 7 tables for the parliamentary constituency; the counting of votes for the parliamentary constituency will be held in tandem with that of the assembly constituencies for the respective polling booths.

Another 4 tables have been provided for the counting of postal ballots; two each for assembly and parliamentary constituencies. There is time till 8 a.m. Friday for the remaining postal ballots to arrive in order to be counted.

The Chief Electoral Office has provided for 3 officials to be stationed at each table; they consist of a Counting Supervisor and two counting agents. The Counting Supervisor is a gazetted rank officer while the Counting agents are of the rank of senior accountant/ accountant. Once the votes in the EVM have been counted, the Counting Supervisor tabulates them in the form provided to him. The tabulation is done according to total overall votes and votes per candidate.

Then comes the total number of postal ballots polled which are also tabulated in the same fashion.

Once the counting and tabulation has been completed, an official of the rank of ADC will collect the filled tabulation forms from each table and take them to the Returning Officer. Here again, the figures will be crosschecked. Only then will the election results be declared for the particular constituency. Before that, the RO also has to fill in the figures in the electronic form provided by the Election Commission of India and forward it to the Commission.

It has to be noted here that the counting of postal ballots has to be completed before the counting of votes from the EVMs are completed. In case the counting of postal ballots is not over, the last 2 rounds of counting of votes from the EVM will be delayed till all the postal ballots of that particular constituency have been counted. 

Officials are unwilling to specify the time by when the counting process will be over and the overall results declared; however it is expected that counting should be over by late afternoon of 16 May.

Interestingly, the office of the CEO has made arrangements for the live telecast of the counting process in its office for its officers and staff. From here they can monitor the counting in all the counting halls in the districts. In fact the CEO’s office has also been monitoring the security in the strong rooms in the same way – through webcasting.

Authenticated results will be available on the website http://eciresults.nic.in/ and results will also be available on the official website of the east district administration http://eastsikkim.in/ and its Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/dmgangtok.eastsikkim?ref=tn_tnmn

As for post poll violence, these can never be written off, and for this purpose, the Sikkim Police has again deployed large number of personnel including SAP and IRBn to various places. It is, however, hoped that there will be no untoward incident and the losing party, as well as the victors, will accept the mandate of the public with humility. The two major parties are informed to have reined in their cadres with directions to maintain peace; more volatile personnel have been told to keep away from the counting centres, it is informed.

Separate arrangements have been made for supporters of SDF and SKM in all the district centres in order to ensure peace. For Gangtok two venues have been provided, the Paljor Stadium for SKM supporters and the Guards Ground for SDF supporters. For West District the segregation is not so absolute. While counting will be done at the Kyongsa School Auditorium, the supporters will be kept at the Kyongsa ground but segregated by a partition. There will be exclusive points of entry for supporters of both parties. Similar arrangement has been at Namchi where the counting will take place at the Namchi Girls’ School. Supporters of both parties will be at the school ground but segregated by a partition.

Also provided are security personnel at each counting venue who will be deployed in 3 cordons. The inner most cordon will be manned by central forces, the middle cordon by SAP and IRBn personnel and the outermost cordon by the Sikkim Police.