Bihar Assembly Election 2020: Counting of votes to begin at 8am, early trends likely by 10am. Full schedule here

The counting of votes polled in the Bihar assembly elections will begin early on Tuesday. Even as most exit polls have predicted a big win for Tejashwi Yadav-led Grand Alliance, or Mahagathbandhan, comprising the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress and the Left parties in the state, the incumbent Nitish Kumar is looking to retain another term in the state.

If predictions of the pollster come out to be true, which have often been wide off the mark, Yadav will become the youngest chief minister any state in the country has had. Tuesday’s counting will also decide the political fate of nearly a score of ministers, including Nand Kishore Yadav (Patna Sahib), Pramod Kumar (Motihari), Rana Randhir (Madhuban), Suresh Sharma (Muzaffarpur), Shrawan Kumar (Nalanda), Jai Kumar Singh (Dinara) and Krishnanandan Prasad Verma (Jehanabad).

Click here for full coverage of Bihar assembly election 2020

The voting across 243-assembly constituencies in Bihar was held in three phases on October 28, November 3, and November 7.

Here is the full schedule of Bihar election result

1. Counting to begin at 8am: Vote-counting to begin at 8am across 55 polling stations.

2. More voting centres: The Election Commission of India has increased the number of vote counting stations this time to ensure social distancing due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The poll panel said it has set up 55 counting centres, housing 414 halls, spread across all the 38 districts of the state.

3. Three counting centres in each district: A maximum of three counting centres each have been set up in four districts of East Champaran (which has 12 assembly constituencies), Gaya (10 constituencies), Siwan (eight constituencies) and Begusarai (seven). Rest other districts either have one or two counting centres each.

4. Early trends by 10am: As has happened in the past, early trends, that is, which party or candidate is leading on a particular assembly seat, are likely to trickle in by 10am.

5. Better picture with leading parties on all seats: As counting progresses and the Election Commission announces which parties are leading across all the assembly constituencies, a more definite observation can be made about what the future holds for Bihar.

6. Result by evening or Wednesday: The counting of votes is expected to conclude by evening, however, on several occasions, it has stretched onto the next day as the exercise is time-consuming.