Vote counting begins as three debutants square off in Jharsuguda.

At eight in the morning on Saturday, there will be strict security when the ballots are counted in the byelection for the Jharsuguda assembly seat in Odisha. According to sources, there will be 18 rounds of voting and 14 tables used for the vote tally.

Following the assassination of incumbent MLA and former Health Minister Naba Kishore Das on January 29, a byelection was required.Despite the fact that nine candidates are running, the BJD, BJP, and Congress are the key rivals.

Deepali Das, a candidate for the BJD, is the daughter of the deceased minister; Tankadhar Tripathy is the nominee for the BJP. The late MLA Biren Pandey’s son Tarun Pandey is a candidate for the Congress.

In the by-election conducted on May 10, 2.21 lakh people cast their ballots, yielding a final vote total of 79.21%.

Aboli Sunil Naravane, the district collector for Jharsuguda, and Parmar Smit Parshottamdas, the superintendent of police, said that preparations had been taken to ensure the orderly conduct of the counting.