A thick blanket of security has been put in place across Karnataka to ensure a free and fair counting of votes. The police have banned celebrations, processions and bursting of crackers around the 38 counting centres in the state and deployed additional forces in the area around those centres.


Around the five counting centres in the capital city of Bengaluru, an elaborate three-layer security arrangement has been planned.


The situation around the centre is said to be under control; however, the election-governing body, earlier, noted that a marginal percentage of Electronic Voting Machine and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail failures has been reported. On Saturday, polling took place in 222 out of 224 assembly constituencies spread across 58,546 polling stations. -- ANI