Mismanagement delays counting by eight hours

BELYING ALL claims of smooth arrangement for the counting of votes coupled with lack of coordination between the police and election officials led to a delay of about eight hours before the counting of votes could actually begin at around 4 pm at both the centers ? government polytechnic and the ITI.

BELYING ALL claims of smooth arrangement for the counting of votes coupled with lack of coordination between the police and election officials led to a delay of about eight hours before the counting of votes could actually begin at around 4 pm at both the centers — government polytechnic and the ITI. However, the only exception was counting for Bithoor Nagar Panchayat, which began at the scheduled time of 8 in the morning.

HT Image

Officials engaged in the counting duty preferring anonymity cited improper sitting arrangements at the counting booths. Along with this, delay in bringing the ballot boxes from the store especially at polytechnic and heated exchange of words between the police and election officials at ITI also added to the problems.

At polytechnic, counting of votes of 62 wards along with Bithoor Nagar Panchayat is in progress while at ITI counting of votes of 48 wards is underway.
Such was the delay that sorting of the votes of mayoral and corporators’ candidates could actually start at 4 pm.

With the inordinate delay in start of the counting process, results of the corporators’ seat were likely to get delayed, while the result for the mayoral seat was expected not before early morning on Tuesday.

Trouble at ITI began when at around 1 pm police personnel deployed at the entrance denied entry to about 20 election officials into the main building. All the election officials had come out of the main building for a lunch break.

Police personnel deployed at the entrance demanded special passes issued by the district administration. Failing to produce the same, the police personnel refused entry to the election officials into the main building. Officials claimed that the district administration did not issue any pass to them and they were instructed to display their department identity cards if and when needed.

Counting supervisors Vinod Kumar Dubey of the Collectorate and Ratan Kumar Pandey of the Irrigation Department asserted that no passes were issued to them by the district administration.

However, the matter could only be resolved after the intervention of Circle Officer of Govind Nagar OP Singh. The election officials were, however, permitted to enter the main building after about half-an-hour.

However, Assistant District Election Officer SK Dwivedi said, “Passes were issued to all officials associated with the election process. There is a possibility that employees might have forgotten to collect them.”

Meanwhile, one of the ballot boxes of ward number 80 was found unsealed.

BJP’s mayoral candidate Ravindra Patni brought the fact to the notice of the concerned election authorities.