Bhubaneswar, Nov 9 (IANS): Elaborate arrangements have been made for the counting of votes polled in the Balasore and Tirtol assembly by-elections in Odisha amid strict adherence to the Covid-19 guidelines, an official said on Monday.

The counting of votes for the by-elections held on November 3 will begin from 8 a.m. on Tuesday, said Chief Electoral Officer S.K. Lohani.

He said the progress of the results will be announced after each round of counting is completed.

The electoral fortunes of 15 candidates will be decided on Tuesday.

For the Balasore Sadar constituency, counting will be done at the Balasore Collectorate, while counting for the Tirtol assembly constituency will be held at the SVM College premises, Jagatsinghpur.

Lohani said a three-layer security arrangement has been made for counting of votes in the two assembly constituencies.

The outer layer will be manned by the local police while the middle layer will be manned by the state armed police personnel and the innermost layer by the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF).

Lohani said that the counting of postal ballots will be started first followed by the EVM counting.

All precautions related to Covid protocols will be followed like social distancing, face mask, face shield, sanitisation of the area on a regular basis etc., he added.

In addition to the wire mesh for participation between agents and polling personnel, there will also be transparent polythene sheet for maintaining social distancing.

The CEO said that round wise results will be uploaded in the website results.eci.gov.in. The Same will be disseminated outside the counting centre as well as CEO's office.

Apart from this, the results can also be viewed round wise on the social media handles of the CEO, both Twitter and Facebook.

The by-elections in the two constituencies were necessitated by the demise of BJP MLA Madan Mohan Dutta in Balasore and BJD legislator Bishnu Charan Das in Tirtol.