NEW DELHI, March 3: The much-hyped method used by the Election Commission to accelerate the counting process failed to do the trick in the New Delhi constituency, not doing much for the morale of counting officials at two counting centres at Mandir Marg and Talkatora Stadium.The counting process moved at a slow pace especially in the assembly segments of Sarojini Nagar, Minto Road and Kasturba Nagar. According to the Returning Officer of the constituency, Satya Gopal: "The results were only expected after midnight, though they were trying to speed up the process. There were some delays in a few segments," he said."We even replaced officials on the tables where counting was slow," he added.Though the counting started on time at 8 am, only the postal ballot was counted in the first three hours. The first round was complete by 1 pm but the pace slackened further and only six rounds were completed by midnight. There was still one more round to go. The Election Commission had decided to try out theFast Counting Process in New Delhi, Chandigarh, Lakshadweep, and the two constituencies in Goa.In the new method, instead of mixing the votes from the entire constituency, votes from 14 tables in a counting hall were mixed and then the votes were counted.According to some polling officials, there was little they could do about the process. "The process has been speeded up a bit by the new method, but then we have to count, recheck, tabulate and then give the results to the ARO, who passes it on to the RO."As overzealous polling officials tried to meet Election Commission deadlines, often the wrong figures reached the Returning Officers" office, who in turn tried to correct the mistakes. Satya Gopal admitted, "It would have been better if we had been provided with computers to do the calculations. That way it would have been faster. Besides, they should have taken 28 boxes for counting instead of 14," he added.Then there was some disruption in the counting as the seal on one of the ballot boxesfrom the Minto Road segment was disputed by the Congress agent The argument became heated as Dhawan stepped in, stating that the counting should be stopped and the matter be solved.Finally the election observers intervened and it was decided that the ballot box would be kept aside and the votes would be counted later. The EC's hopes of having a successful system on hand took a further bashing as counting at the Karol Bagh and Chandni Chowk constituencies was completed before New Delhi. The CEC was not available for comment. EC Secretary K J Rao also refused to comment about the failure of the new system in New Delhi.
