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Photo courtesy: twitter/@ECISVEEP

New Delhi: The counting for 542 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, panning over seven phases, began at 8 am across India on Thursday. In Maharashtra, the fate of 867 candidates contesting 48 Lok Sabha seats for the General election 2019 will be decided after the counting of all the votes are done.

As per the Supreme Court's instruction to the Election Commission (EC), the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips tally will also be taken into account while counting the votes this time. Paper slips of five VVPATs per assembly segment in every parliamentary segment will be counted. The vote tallying will begin after the last round of counting which will lead to delay in the results by at least five hours or more.

Elections to 542 seats of the 543-member Lok Sabha, panning over seven phases, ended Sunday (May) 19 since the Election Commission deferred election for Vellore in Tamil Nadu over allegations of misuse of money power.

Almost all the exit polls, shown on May 19 (Sunday), forecast another term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a thumping majority. Meanwhile, some exit polls projected that the BJP-led NDA will get more than 300 seats to comfortably cross the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.

Most exit polls predict between 35-40 out of the 48 seats in Maharashtra - the second largest number in the country - to the NDA.

The prominent seat in Maharashtra is Nagpur. Former BJP MP Nana Patole is the Congress candidate from Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency, which is held by Union minister Nitin Gadkari.

Gadkari had won the Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency by about 2.85 lakh votes in General Election 2019. Patole, was the sitting MP from Bhandara-Gondia constituency but he quit the BJP to join the Congress, and has been fielded from Nagpur.

In Maharashtra, electors voted for 48 Lok Sabha seats in the first (April 11), second (April 18), third (April 23) and fourth (April 29) phase. In the first phase people voted for seven Lok Sabha seats, 10 for the second phase, 14 in the third phase and 17 for the fourth phase.

Maharashtra recorded 63.04 percent voter  turn out in the first phase. In the second phase, the state recorded 62.85 percent voter turnout. In the third phase the state recorded 62.36 percent voter turnout while in the fourth phase the state recorded 57.33 percent voter turnout.

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