K'taka on tenterhooks as the D-day nears

Bangalore, May 23: All is set for the counting process of the 14th Assembly elections in Karnataka on May 25 with the results of all the 224 assembly constituencies expected to be declared by 1500 hrs the same day.

Briefing newsmen State Chief Electoral Officer M N Vidyashankar said that for the first time in the country a new software was being implemented to enable real time declaration of results at the state headquarters here. He said all the 46 counting centres across the state have been networked through a local area network and linked to the state wide area network. Mr Vidyashankar said a trial of both connectivity and network was successfully conducted yesterday. Redundancy in infrastructure had been put in place to ensure a trouble free counting process he added. He said that the trends would start trickling in around 1030 hrs after counting of Electronic Voting Machines commences at around 0800 hrs. Initially the postal ballots would be counted, he added.

An estimated 64.72 per cent of the 40.32 million voters had cast their franchise in the three phase polling held on May 10, May 16 and May 22 sealing the fate of 2253 candidates, who included 224 from the BJP, aiming to capture power on its own 222 from the Congress, 209 of the JD(S), 217 of the BSP and 121 of Samajwadi Party.

The State Information Department had made elaborate arrangements at a media centre here to declare the results. The media centre had been set up at the new Vartha Bhavan with all the latest electronic gadets, including broadband internet, computers and scanners. The centre had been networked extensively to all the district units to enable free flow of results, I M Vittalamurthy, State Principal Secretary for Information and Tourism told newsmen. The National Informatic Centre was providing exclusive information from each and every counting centre.

UNI