Goa Assembly polls: Counting of votes to begin at 8 am tomorrow amid high security

Panaji (Goa) [India], March 9 : All arrangements for counting of votes for the recently held Goa Assembly election for all 40 constituencies scheduled to take place on Thursday have been made, said the Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday.
The counting will start at 8 am. The counting for North Goa district will take place at Government Polytechnic, Altinho, Panji and for South Goa District will take place at Shree Damodar College of Commerce and Economics, Combo, Margao.
According to EC, a three-tier security arrangement has been done at both counting centres with the inner perimeter guarded by Central Armed Police Forces and middle perimeter is covered by the Armed Police of Goa Police and the outer cordon is done by District Police.
Prohibitory Orders under section 144 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 have also been issued by the District Magistrates. All counting halls, strong rooms and premises have been put under CCTV surveillance with control rooms for viewing and viewing arena for candidates agents.
Assembly elections in Goa were held on February 14. Goa witnessed 79.61 per cent voter turnout.
More than 1,500 counting officials have been trained and deployed for the purpose. In the beginning, ballots received under the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS) from Service Voters will be taken up thereafter ballots of absentee voters will be taken up and thereafter postal ballots of Polling Officials will be taken up for counting.
Simultaneously, at 8.30 am the counting of EVMs will start. It is expected that the counting of votes on postal ballots and EVMs will be over by 4 hours. Thereafter, a mandatory count of 5 VVPAT in sequential order will be undertaken in all constituencies, said EC.