Madhya Pradesh elections: The delay in the result declaration explained

Bhopal, Dec 12: Counting in Madhya Pradesh began at 8 am on Tuesday and the result is not clear as yet. As of 5.30 am today, the Congress's tally stood at 115 and the BJP's at 108. The Election Commission of India is yet to officially declare the results for the 230 member MP assembly, where the magic mark is 116.

According to Chief Electoral Officer of Madhya Pradesh, V L Kantharao, the delay is because every candidate has to be provided with a certificate after every round of counting. His counterpart in Rajasthan, Anand Kumar said that the delay was expected because votes in the EVMs have to be matched by randomly selecting a voter verifiable paper audit trail from a polling centre in each assembly constituency.

The pace of the counting was extremely slow in Madhya Pradesh, when compared to the four other states, where the results have been declared. At around 5 pm on Tuesday, counting in several centres had not been completed. The minimum number of rounds of counting was 125 and the maximum stood at 32.

On Tuesday at 5 pm some constituencies had completed 21 rounds of counting while others had completed 10 to 11 rounds only. It may be recalled that a Congress delegation led by Kamal Nath had met with the Chief Election Commissioner in New Delhi and demanded that a certificate of votes polled after every round be given.

Where there are more candidates, it takes more time to complete the counting and provide a certificate to the candidates. This process has led to a delay in the counting.