Capital counts down today

All eyes on counting

- Dhrubo Jyoti and Alok KN Mishra

NEW DELHI: Roughly 9.5 million votes cast at 13,766 polling booths to determine the next government of Delhi will be counted beginning at 8am on Saturday, bringing the curtain down on the first electoral contest of the year.

The votes will be counted at 19 counting centres across the national capital to determine the future of 698 candidates who were in the fray in what was the most closely fought assembly elections in years.

"We have made robust security arrangements for counting day. Only authorised personnel will be allowed inside the counting centres, where the use of mobile phones will be strictly prohibited," special commissioner of police Devesh Chandra Srivastva said.

Around 5,000 personnel will be on duty to ensure free-and-fair counting. The eve of the counting day was marked by rising political tensions in the Capital as all parties traded charges of irregularities.

Almost every exit poll has predicted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gaining in strength and might be headed for a victory after 27 years by ending the stranglehold of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over the national capital. They were unanimous in terms of the larger direction of the outcome - they forecast that the BJP would improve dramatically on its 2020 showing and there would be big erosion in the AAP's voter base.