Vote counting begins in five states, including Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal

India’s election machinery is doing the most visible part of the job today — counting. From 8 am on Monday, May 4, officials started opening postal ballots and then moving into EVM rounds for assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry. These five contests cover 824 seats in all, so this is not one local result day. It is a big regional power test with national consequences too. ### Why are five places counting on the same day? Because these assembly elections were scheduled to land together, and India’s Election Commission publishes the trends and results through one central system. The official results site says trends start from 8:00 am on May 4, 2026, while the data itself is entered by Returning Officers from counting centres in each constituency. That means active updates, not one giant national tally room. ### Which states are in play? West Bengal is the biggest of the lot with 294 seats. Tamil Nadu has 234, Kerala 140, Assam 126, and Puducherry 30. Put together, that is 824 seats whose winners start getting locked in today. That scale matters because each state has its own party system and alliances — so one counting day can produce five very different political stories. ### Why do postal ballots come first? Basically, the count does not begin with the machine totals people usually focus on. It starts with postal ballots — including ballots sent electronically to eligible service voters through the ETPBS system — and then shifts to votes recorded in EVMs. That order matters because early television trends can look strange or lopsided before the machine rounds begin to fill out the real picture. ### How do the EVM rounds work? Each constituency is counted in rounds rather than one dump of votes at once. Supervisors and micro-observers handle the tables, and the Returning Officer compiles the running totals. As more rounds are completed, the trend usually becomes harder to reverse. But the catch is that early leads can still be misleading if a candidate’s strong booths are counted first. ### Where does VVPAT fit in? VVPAT is the paper trail attached to the EVM system. A voter presses a button on the machine, and the VVPAT briefly shows the printed choice before storing that slip inside a sealed box. During counting, slips from selected polling stations are verified against the EVM record. That is the transparency layer meant to answer the obvious question — did the machine total match the paper trail? ### Why is everyone so careful about “official” results? Because the Election Commission’s own portal warns that the displayed figures are the numbers being entered from counting centres, and the final constituency data is shared later in Form-20. So the right way to read today is: trends first, declarations later, paperwork after that. In other words, a flashy lead on TV is not the same thing as a legally final result. ### What is the betting-market problem here? There is also a murkier layer around today’s count. A report from The Federal says illegal prediction and betting markets tied to these elections may have drawn more than ₹25,000 crore in wagers across the five contests, often using offshore platforms, VPNs and crypto rails. That does not change the ballots being counted, but it does raise the narratives before official numbers settle. ### What should people watch through the day? Watch the sequence, not just the headline. First come postal ballots. Then EVM rounds start shaping the contest. Then VVPAT checks and constituency-level confirmations help lock things down. By evening, most winners should be clear — but the smart read is the official constituency result, not the loudest early trend. The bottom line is simple — today is not just about who is ahead. It is about how India turns millions of votes into accepted results, one round, one form and one verification step at a time.